Jaeger Days: Stories From the War
by Thrae Elddim
Summary: When a portal swallowed Steve, Tony, Nat and Clint, the last thing they expected was to fight Godzilla on the other side. The way they see it, they have no option but to keep fighting, with jaegers and building tools alike, until the end. Until they can get home. Stony (Steve/Tony), side Bruce/Nat, Raleigh/Mako, Clint/Laura.
1. A Brave New World

I should be working on the sequel for Eyes of Icarus. I really should. But this wouldn't leave me alone, for love, money or cookies. So that's my excuse for this maybe not unneeded crossover we have here.

Pairings is SuperHusbands with side Natasha/Bruce, Raleigh/Mako, and Clint/Laura. Don't like, don't read.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the recognized characters, or anything else under copyright. I'm not making any money off of this. I don't own the cover image either, I found it on Google Images.

* * *

 **Chapter One: A Brave New World**

" _I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."_

― _Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_

When they got sent through the stupid portal, Steve thought he should have expected something like this. Well, maybe not exactly. Who would have been able to prepare themselves to fight Godzilla in an alternate universe?

So when he was tossed to a street in the middle of an attack by a giant monster, Steve was sure no one would blame him for his language. "Son of a bitch," he muttered to himself.

It said something that no one called him out on it. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Hawkeye asked through miraculously working comms.

"It's not Shakespeare in the Park," Tony replied, sounding almost impressed, "Usually Godzilla is the good guy though…"

"There are still civilians within range," Natasha interrupted.

There was a crash as the monster smashed a high-rise. The ground rumbled beneath it as it walked, and the air shivered with its roars. What kind of mess was this time period- or universe- in?

"This may not be our world, but we need to help," Steve said, hefting his shield. This wasn't the biggest thing they've fought, though last time they had the full team. It was really a shame that Thor and the Hulk had been well away from the area that got teleported.

"No arguments here, Cap. Usual battle formation?" Tony asked. A red and gold streak showed him zooming overhead to analyze the situation.

"Widow, Hawkeye, run evac until we get a better idea of what weaknesses it has," Steve ordered, walking toward the calamity, "Iron Man, you hit it from the air, and I'll keep it occupied on the ground." It took a moment for him to decide that his catchphrase was appropriate. "Avengers, assemble!"

The fight was tougher than usual with two of their heaviest hitters left behind. But they made it work, even when the stupid news helicopters got in the way. While Iron Man kept its head busy with his light beams and even managed to fry its eyes out, Steve ran all over its scaly hide, stabbing into it with his shield wherever he could and often using it as a springboard.

The phosphorescent blue blood was bad news, made even Steve choke and his lungs burn like he had asthma again. "Widow, Hawkeye, stay out of range! The blood is toxic!" he ordered with a hacking cough.

"Roger that. We'll fight from a distance," Clint confirmed.

A burst of flame erupted from the area of the monster's eye, an explosive arrow.

"Cap, we need to finish this off fast. The suit's nearly out of power," Tony said seriously. He grunted as he was batted away by a taloned hand. The hit was returned with a mini missile.

That put a dent in this plan. "Any bright ideas?" Steve asked through gritted teeth. Even his muscles were burning; they had been dropped from one fight right into another with no rest.

"Civilians are clear," Natasha reported in his ear, "Joining Hawkeye now." How she would do that with most of the building destroyed and no idea where he was, Steve wasn't sure but let it go. It was like they shared a brain half the time.

There was no response from Tony as Steve hopped from the arm to the shoulder and stabbed it on the neck with his shield. "Well?" he shouted into the comm in order to be heard over the roars of the monster.

"Looks like it's time to imitate Jonas again," Tony announced in his ear, "I fucking hate doing that, it takes forever to get the bullshit out of the suit." Before he could be dissuaded he took advantage of the monster's open mouth and dove straight in.

"Why does he always insist on doing things the most ridiculous way he can?" Clint complained as another explosive arrow hit home.

"It's Tony," Natasha replied dryly.

That did say enough. Even as Steve stabbed at the neck again, he felt the shudders of Iron Man blasting through its insides. It clutched at its chest and stomach, screeching in agony, before a final explosion released Iron Man from the skin of its belly like a C-section. Immediately it began swaying unsteadily, its cries getting weaker as it lost strength.

"Can you give me a lift?" Steve requested. Even for him it was getting difficult to keep balance, the hide slick with neon blue gunk. Only his shield lodged into its neck allowed him to stay on his feet during a particularly violent stumble.

"Sure thing Cap, jump off the side of the shoulder," was the glib reply.

"Roger that," Steve replied. He yanked his shield out, producing one final roar before he sprinted to the edge. Without a thought, he leaped into the open air.

His faith was rewarded; Iron Man plucked him effortlessly out of the air as he had a dozen times before.

It wasn't a moment too soon: the very air around them shuddered when the monster fell. It didn't get up.

"No movement. Your Jonas maneuver did its job, Iron Man," Hawkeye reported.

"Looks like our job is done here," Steve said gratefully. He was ready to find a buffet and then pass out for a few days. Carried against the metal chest of Iron Man, he found himself on the ground after getting an aerial view of the situation.

It looked like Hawkeye was right and it really was done. There was no sign of life from the thing they had just killed. The corpse just laid on its back, a phosphorescent blue and charcoal grey smudge on the ruined cityscape.

Once on the ground, Steve stepped out of the hold the metal arms had on him and off the feet of the Iron Man armor. The cold feeling he got was expertly ignored, just as it had been for the year since the Battle of New York. Instead of doing something silly like giving Iron Man a hug or peeling off the helmet to kiss the lips under it, Steve took off his own helmet with a sigh of relief. The breeze on his overheated forehead and sweat-soaked hair felt heavenly.

"Meet up at ground zero, ASAP. Time to help with the clean-up," he decided after a moment's break. He was exhausted, but these people needed help. There was no wasting time when lives were in the balance, even when they felt ready to drop.

An arrow with a line attached speared into the carcass. They were planning to zip-line down, then.

"I repeat, do not touch the carcass or the blood," Steve told them sternly.

"Yeah yeah, gotcha," Hawkeye returned casually. Steve could almost imagine the flippant hand wave that he would normally give.

Beside him, Tony removed the helmet. "Dear Thor, it smells out here," he swore and put it right back on.

Privately, Steve agreed. This was one of the few times he wished that he had allowed Tony to give him a full Iron Man-style helmet. The area stank of rotten fish and unburied corpses, coupled with salt water and crushed rock. Like Omaha Beach.

The assassins jetted down the line, letting go and tucking themselves into a roll just high enough to not break anything. From the awkward stumbles they did before they got themselves together, it was still enough to jar their bones. Compared to Tony and Steve, they were positively pristine.

"You're covered in the stuff," Natasha stated softly, eyeing the ruined Captain America suit with carefully modulated concern.

The protective red, white and blue fabric was covered in neon blue, and Steve swore it had gotten everywhere. His body felt stickier than usual, his suit heavy like that one time they fought living jello and he had to burn it. Slime squelched inside his boots. He could even taste it, acidic and burning his mouth. Not for the first time, he wished he had gone the route Bucky did and became a sniper instead of a melee specialist.

"It burns like the dickens, and tastes disgusting, but I think I'll live," Steve assured her with a strained grin, "Better me than you." That was putting it nicely. More likely than not his enhanced body could handle it, if badly, where he had no idea what it would do to the others.

"Uh, I don't think we're going to do much cleaning up," Tony said, head turned away from the carcass.

When Steve looked, he groaned and squeezed his eyes closed. Of course, they had to deal with the authorities first.

And these didn't look like the friendly kind, considering the guns and riot shields that were being pointed in their direction. The uncertainty in their faces showed that there may not be anyone of their caliber wherever they were. Damn.

With a sigh, Steve set the shield on his back and raised his hands in a placating gesture. Behind him, he heard guns get holstered and an arrow be put back in a quiver. Beside him, Tony made the helmet of his suit collapse.

"We come in peace," the genius proclaimed grandly. There were several clicks as his arsenal were put away, but Steve knew that he was still able to release it all in a matter of seconds.

Behind him, Clint groaned. "We're not that kind of aliens," he protested.

"You're just jealous you didn't think of it first," Tony shot back.

As their teammates began to squabble childishly, Steve and Natasha rolled their eyes and took a few careful steps toward the riot cops. "No matter how badly he phrased it, he's right. We're here to help," Captain America told them with his best expression of honesty.

One of the riot cops pressed something on her helmet. From the way she spoke not to them but about them, it must have been a comm line. "We have them. Two are covered in kaiju blue," she reported. There were a few seconds before she replied, "Roger that," and pushed the button again. This must be in the Pacific Northwest from her accent, maybe Portland since he didn't see the Space Needle anywhere.

"All the civilians I could find are hiding in the basements of nearby buildings," Natasha told the cop, "A few I had to drop into the sewers." She grimaced.

Sympathetically, Steve smiled at her. It was better than death, even if they would smell terrible at the end of this.

"You all need to be taken for decontamination and treatment," the cop told them all with a grim smile, "Especially you, sir. Follow me." She gestured to Steve in all his gore-covered glory.

As she gave instructions to her team, the Avengers silently conferred. After this long as a team, they knew each other well enough that words weren't often needed. A few nods and shrugs and pointed glances were enough agreement. They'd go along with it, for now.

"You lot, come with me," the cop who was in charge told them and began walking away from the scene.

The superheroes followed, all wary and tense. It was an unknown version of earth with giant monsters the likes of which they didn't often see and were apparently at least partially toxic. It would be foolish to get comfortable.

"I guess we should thank you for taking it down," the cop told them matter-of-factly, "We've been losing too many jaegers lately." What she was talking about, Steve had no idea beyond that the word 'jaeger' was German for warrior.

When he looked at the others, they had no idea either. Even Natasha frowned in confusion.

"What's going on here? What was that thing?" Steve demanded. The unsettling feeling in his stomach was intensifying. Something was very wrong here.

This time it was the riot cop's turn to look confused. "Where have you been living for the past decade?" she asked, lips quirking upward like they were joking, "You know that the kaiju war started eleven years ago and we made the jaeger program to fight them." When she saw them have another silent conference that led to even more confusion, she asked, "Have you been in a secret lab or something before now?"

It was Natasha's turn to smile blandly. "You wouldn't believe us if we told you," she stated truthfully.

Though the cop looked like she wanted to ask, she didn't. They had reached a large white tent with the toxicity symbol on it. "Good luck in there," she said to Steve and Tony with pity in her eyes as she left.

They frowned at each other, wondering just what kind of hell they had stepped into. "Better get this done with," Clint said with a shrug, and sauntered into the tent.

The rest followed and were met with people in hazmat suits. "Men on this side, women on the other," one instructed them, gesturing to where they would be sent.

Though he hated the team being separated, Steve knew that Natasha could handle anything that came her way. She departed with a nod to the left side of the tent.

The rest went right, the Iron Man armor clunking along with whirring mechanical joints. Before they could be instructed, Tony did something that made the armor open up at the front so that he could step out. "I'm fine, now can I go clean the armor?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

It looked like the hazmat people didn't expect that. They all looked at each other before an especially short man told him that he could get into a clean suit and spray off the armor in here.

With an aborted motion like he was going to pat Steve on the shoulder but decided against it, Tony sauntered away. The armor followed on its own, still open.

From there, it was just like every toxic clean-up that Steve had ever been through. As usual Hawkeye was inspected and deemed clean enough to not need a shower. He was allowed to go to the medical tent straight away once his boots were disinfected.

It was normal by now for Steve to be one of those that had to stay behind and get sprayed down. With a sigh he stripped off his costume, handing over his helmet and unhooking the shield from his back. The chest armor was unfastened quickly, and then his gloves and boots before the main part of his clothing.

There was a whistle from the other side of the tent. When he looked, Tony had just gotten back and was in a white suit just like the workers. "Damn, Spangles," he said with a grin, "Looking good. Want me to scrub you up instead?" He held up a scrub brush where he stood beside the now-closed armor.

"No!" Steve spluttered, "I'm fine, I'll do it myself." He turned his back to the infuriating, leering man with cheeks that he felt turning an alarming shade of pink.

When he looked down, he really did need to scrub up. The blue stuff had gotten through his suit and dyed his skin. His armor and gloves had protected the vital bits of his body, but that left his undercarriage, forearms, legs and feet completely blue. Steve knew that his face was covered in the stuff too. With a grimace he stepped under a shower head and allowed himself to be cleaned off.

Despite the bleach that was being used on his body, it actually felt kind of relaxing. The sweat was coming off despite that the water ran the color of blueberry preserves. If only it smelled that good.

On the other side of the tent, he heard the soft curses and elaborate swears that meant Tony was cleaning the armor of some kind of stupid grime he hated. This stuff really was stubborn, he agreed. Even ten minutes later the water was still running blue, if pale.

After twenty minutes, one of the men said, "This is the cleanest we're gonna get you." By then the water was running clear, despite that Steve's skin was still blue. Not nearly as blue as it had been, though, the color only concentrated in his pores. Much like that time he lost a bet to Clint and had to dye his hair purple.

He was given a clean towel to dry off with and grimaced apologetically when the fabric came away blue. That would be a pain to get clean, if they didn't just destroy it.

The wordless apology was waved off. Apparently it was expected.

He left Tony behind in favor of getting some clothes. Where he wasn't self-conscious about his body (how could he be?) he was admittedly more modest than anyone else on the team. With a grateful sigh he stepped into clothing, even if it was a borrowed bright yellow jumpsuit.

A man in a first responder uniform showed him to another tent, this one with a red cross on the side. With a nod of thanks and a grimace, Steve entered. Immediately he was shown to one of the many curtained off enclosures. From one he could hear Clint complain about his knee popping. Through a gap between the curtains of another he saw Natasha getting her breathing checked.

A doctor was already waiting in the enclosure Steve was dropped off at, a grey-haired woman with clever brown eyes. "Take a seat," she told him kindly, gesturing to a folding chair in the middle of the room.

The usual sort of after-battle tests were performed, from blood pressure to checking for hidden injuries. Every test was passed with flying colors and nods of approval from the doctor. This time though, at the end he was told to cough into a tissue.

Puzzled, Steve did so. When he looked into the tissue, he frowned when he saw the same indigo blue that was in his pores. "What's this?" he asked. His throat hurt just getting the words out.

"Kaiju blue," the doctor told him sympathetically, "I'm sorry, young man. I'm referring you for palliative care." Even Steve knew that meant that there was no chance. They were just going to make his death as comfortable as possible.

"What do you mean? What is this kaiju blue stuff? What does it do?" he asked hoarsely. Despite that he knew it was apparently a death sentence, he needed an explanation.

Much like the riot cop, the doctor frowned at him. But this time it was brief and quickly replaced by a professional smile that almost hid the pity. "Kaiju blue is what we call kaiju blood, but it's also the disease that is caused by it," she explained simply, "First sufferers begin to cough up blue. Then they invariably go into shock and die." She was blunt with her diagnosis, but that was welcome.

Numbness took Steve as he looked down into the blue-stained tissue. It was forced away; he still had a job to do. "Thank you, ma'am," he said with a tight smile.

As the doctor wrote down his information and directions to the nearest hospice, Steve planned and plotted. He was determined to live. This kaiju blue was deadly to ordinary humans, but no one said anything about super-soldiers.


	2. Deal with the Devil

Many thanks to **miapia1955** for favoriting and following, and **pococo** for following. This has been my pet project for a long while, so knowing people are seeing it is wonderful.

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

 **Chapter 2: Deal with the Devil**

" _Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."_

― _Albert Einstein_

In the Alaska Shatterdome, Marshall Stacker Pentecost reviewed the footage from Portland. Chrome Brutus had been ready and raring to go, but there had been no need for them because these strange people had managed to defeat it on their own. No jaeger, only one of them had any kind of armor, and they killed it.

How?

And wasn't that the question of the day, Pentecost thought as he analyzed the three who actually fought. One was the man in the armor, a red and gold blur through most of the fight. Miniature missiles were launched from seemingly everywhere and beams of light shot from his hands. A man in red, white and blue assaulted it with a round shield, jumping impossible distances and showing amazing strength as he drove the edge of the shield in hard enough to actually wound the kaiju. The last was a man who used a bow and arrow of all things from a rooftop, though he was helped by the explosive arrows he seemed to favor.

There was a woman as well, but she did no fighting and so was of less interest. Though she too was extraordinary in her endurance and the quickness with which she climbed the building that the archer was on.

When he got to the section where the armor went down the kaiju's throat and assaulted it from the inside, Pentecost shook his head. It was an idiot's gambit. Even he made a face when the armor blew out the beast's stomach and flew around it.

The people all obviously knew each other. It was in how the man with the shield jumped off the shoulder of the kaiju over a hundred feet above the ground and the armored man caught him mid-air; how the other two joined them as soon as possible. Looking closer at their movements and the words they spoke, it seemed that the man with the shield was their leader and gave instructions through small comms systems.

"Where are they now?" Pentecost asked Choi, who had brought him the footage.

The man grimaced. "The one with the shield is in hospice, nasty case of kaiju blue," he answered, fiddling with his rosary. It was easy to remember that he had watched his grandfather die of kaiju blue several years ago.

That wasn't good. "And the others?" Pentecost prompted, mind working a thousand miles a minute.

"Refused to leave his side," Choi said instantly, "They're in Beaverton."

It was an easy decision for Pentecost, on what to do. "Get me any information you can on these people, Mr Choi. I expect results in an hour," he ordered and went back to staring at the footage from different angles and newscasts.

They were all American from their accents, two from New York, one from the mid-West, and the woman he couldn't identify the origin of. She sounded like she may have been from somewhere between New York and Chicago. It helped that one looked like a walking flag, though Pentecost realized with irony that it had more resemblance to the Puerto Rican flag than the United States.

Otherwise there was no recognition. Shouldn't he have heard if there were people like this? Now if the man in the armor would just take it off…

One of the crews had managed to catch an image of the people with their headgear off. The walking flag was blonde and could be called classically, obscenely, handsome. The second one left Pentecost off balance.

Just to make sure he was seeing this right, he rewound and then paused when the armored man's face was onscreen. There was no doubt about it. Tony Stark was alive and piloting an armored suit the likes of which had never been seen before.

When Choi got back, the mystery only deepened. "We have facial recognition hits from two of them," he said, dropping printouts onto Pentecost's desk in four piles, "You probably already recognized Tony Stark." The genius's picture smirked arrogantly up at the Marshall from one of the piles of paperwork.

"And the other?" Pentecost asked patiently.

"Natasha Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, Tatiana Sokolova, Maria Konn, Irina Zlataryova, the list of aliases is as long as my arm and we're not sure if any of them are real," Choi said, pointing at the other picture that was not taken from the fight. It was of a young woman with bright red hair and pale green eyes, unreadable and calm.

"She was a KGB assassin, but was brought in on our side," Choi continued, puzzlement in his every syllable, "She's got a record both for and against the US that would take a full day to read, except that most everything is redacted under orders of the late Nick Fury." He paused, as if not sure whether to say what he was thinking.

"Go on," Pentecost prompted, looking at his Chief LOCCENT officer over folded hands.

"The only thing that's certain is that she was on some kind of mission in Odessa in 2009. She was killed by another assassin there," Choi said with another look at the papers he had dropped off.

Pentecost rubbed his eyes and prayed for patience. Ever since he was diagnosed, he'd suffered headaches. This was providing one on its own.

"The other two are a mystery. The closest match I can find for Robin Hood there is a carnie that died at age fifteen in Minnesota in 1991," Choi said, tapping that pile of paperwork, before moving on to the last, "Absolutely nothing on the last guy. No facial, voice, nothing. The medical paperwork registers him as a Steven Grant Rogers, age twenty seven. None of them were carrying ID beyond Rogers's dogtags and those things look like World War II relics." The look he gave his superior was bewildered as he dawdled, tapping a pen against his hand in the familiar nervous tic.

It took a moment for Pentecost to think on what he should do. "Prepare a helicopter to head to Beaverton in the morning," he ordered.

"Yes, sir." Choi left the office, closing the door behind him.

Alone, Pentecost looked at the paperwork that had been prepared. The more he read, the less it made sense.

Like Choi said, everything but the death certificate and naturalization record of the woman were redacted by Nick Fury, who they couldn't even ask about it because he had died five years ago of kaiju blue. Moving on to the archer, the only record was of a carnie named Clinton Barton; he had died in an accident involving an out of control elephant.

The stack with Rogers's information was limited to the medical report filed today, diagnosing him with kaiju blue and predicting death in forty eight hours. Body charts showed that he had been exposed on his legs, groin, forearms, face and neck, but had no scars or other markings. Dog tags had been photographed laying on a well built chest, reading, "Steven G Rogers. Captain America. 0-704192 T42 43A. Brooklyn, NY C." That dog tag layout hadn't been used since World War II. His belongings were listed, including the shield, which had been signed into the custody of one Tony Stark.

It was Stark's information that really caught Pentecost's eye. There was no dearth of it, from his father's work with the Manhattan Project to his own weapons designs and romantic liaisons. The thing that interested him the most was the death certificate and associated news editorial.

Anthony Edward Stark had died in Afghanistan in 2011.

* * *

The large body on the bed wheezed and coughed, shivering even under all the blankets piled on him. Otherwise there was no movement or any sign of consciousness. Not even sleepwalking or nightmares. Steve was too still and Tony didn't like it.

Ever since the super soldier had descended into delirium and then unconsciousness, Tony had refused to leave his side except to use the bathroom. After he sneaked back in twice, the doctors and nurses gave up on kicking him out for the night and instead found him a camp bed. If he was going to be there, he may as well be comfortable.

Natasha and Clint spent most of their time at Steve's bedside too, only leaving to sleep or get food for the three of them. Right now they were on one of those food runs, trying to find anything that was edible and didn't require a ration card. That was a lot more difficult than it sounded, apparently.

It was three in the afternoon two days after the fight and Tony was ready to fall asleep himself. He had stayed awake the first night worrying about the super soldier and the second reading everything he could find on kaiju blue, only to get hit in the face with a hundred percent casualty rate every time. Between the buildup in their lungs and the circulatory shock, everyone who ever got it had died within two days.

All Tony could do was pray and pin his hopes on the serum doing its job. He hated doing either, didn't even believe in a god beyond Thor (and that was more an in-joke than anything) but desperate times call for desperate measures. That was how he found himself laying on the bed with Steve, hoping that maybe the other man could feel him there. Fight his way back.

A doctor came in and gave Tony a sympathetic smile. He loathed it. Every single time they came in they expected to have to call for corpse removal, only to be surprised when it turned out otherwise. Teach them right.

"Any change?" the doctor, a pretty young thing named Matherson, asked quietly. She pulled out her stethoscope and began checking anyways.

"Not that I can tell," Tony answered dully. He rested his head on a muscular shoulder as he read, making her work around him.

It seemed that she didn't mind. That was one of the reasons he hadn't had her banned from the room like that douchenozzle who talked so casually about it just being a matter of time. Luckily the rest of the staff were much more competent than him.

"His lungs are starting to clear up," Dr Matherson commented, surprise in every syllable.

Hope shot into Tony's throat. In every case study he had read about they had died with their lungs clogged, almost choking on the excretions. There had never been a report of it clearing up, even slightly. The stethoscope was handed to him and he sighed in relief when he listened first to the left lung and then the right. There was wheezing and rattling, but not as bad as when Dr Daniels allowed him a listen last night.

The smile on Dr Matherson's face put the murky sun shining in the window to shame. "I'll be back in an hour to check on him," she said as she put the scope around her shoulders and began jotting something down on a clipboard. She walked out the door still writing.

Once again alone, Tony paused in his reading. He hadn't been allowed in the labs because he had no medical license or any other paperwork proving that he knew anything about the human body. Nothing he was doing was helping and he had never felt so helpless. "Come back, Steve," he whispered.

When that produced no results, Tony sat up and glared down at the ridiculously handsome face that was so lax with sleep. If it weren't for the tubes providing oxygen, it would have looked like he was taking a nap after getting caught in one of Clint's pranks. "You survived seventy years in the ice and weaponized septicemic plague and anthrax straight to the face," he hissed, "If you get killed by some goddamned alien blood getting up your nose, I'm gonna bring you back just so that I can kill you again." He poked the chest and was gratified to feel it rise against his fingertip.

"I think that you owe the world an explanation, Mr Stark," said an unfamiliar British accent from the door, "And not just for what I heard you say."

Tony turned his head to give the man at the door a dirty look. "Eavesdropping is rude, you know," he snapped.

The man entered the room and shut the door behind him. Between the haircut and the stars on his suit, this guy screamed military. And he wasn't cannon fodder either, four brass stars gleamed from his collar. What was he here for? What did he want with Cap?

"Is it eavesdropping if the door was open?" the man asked hypothetically before getting serious. "I am Marshall Stacker Pentecost. I run the Anchorage Shatterdome of the jaeger program." Dark eyes looked all around the room before settling on Tony again. "Where are your friends?"

Warily Tony positioned himself between the Marshall and Cap's vulnerable body. "Trying to get food," he answered roughly, "What's it to you?" His mind worked overtime, wondering what kind of shit was going to hit the fan now.

The man sat down without invitation on the chair Natasha usually occupied. "It took the military six days to take down the first kaiju. That was a Category One, the weakest we've seen. You and your friends took on a Category Three and won, within an hour," he stated, watching the genius carefully.

"We're just that good," Tony deflected sassily. He narrowed his eyes, putting the pieces together quickly. "You want to know how we did it. What's so different about us," he concluded.

"Our jaegers could be significantly improved, with your help," Marshall Pentecost said. He was asking for assistance, offering a job, without saying so.

It was too bad that Tony had stopped working with the government on weapons after his little trip to Afghanistan. "I don't do weapons anymore," he said bluntly.

Pentecost smiled, and it was a sharp one. "You know, Tony Stark died in 2011 in Afghanistan. A missile he designed hit him and the convoy he was with," he said mildly, "It makes me wonder… who are you?" The implication couldn't be clearer.

Even Tony's brain froze. Dead. In this universe he had existed, his entire life was probably the same, except that in this universe the terrorists hadn't gotten greedy. It was a sobering look at what could have happened to him.

Except that there were more pressing concerns right now. He was being accused of identity theft, except that it really was him. How could he…? Tony could only hope that Spangles and Widow wouldn't kill him for this. "Is there a word for when the truth is stranger than fiction?" he asked. It took an enormous amount of effort to not look as exhausted and aggravated as he really was.

"Not that I'm aware of," Pentecost answered with a raised eyebrow. He looked remarkably relaxed, all things considered. Time to shake that up.

"Well there should be. Because you won't believe me, even though this is the honest to Odin truth," Tony rambled. It felt like he was announcing all over again that he was Iron Man when he said, "We- me, Nat, Clint and Steve- are from an alternate universe."

The silence that pressed in on them made Tony itch to keep talking. He refused, instead meeting the Marshall's eyes stubbornly. Only the sounds of medical personnel from the hall kept it from being absolute.

"Prove it," Pentecost challenged him quietly. His eyes dared Tony to lie, to not be able to back up his ridiculous story.

"In our universe, there aren't any kaiju. There are a whole bunch of nutheads that like trying to take over the world, but none of this sort of shit. That's confined to comics and tv. You have jaegers and we have superheroes," Tony said, adding, "We _are_ superheroes. You say that Tony Stark died in Afghanistan. You probably have pictures." He swallowed the bile that crept up his throat at what he was about to do.

In response, Pentecost showed him an autopsy photo. Seeing his own face and body on the slab was surreal. But it showed what Tony was looking for, the wounds that killed him. They were the same as the scars on his torso.

"Compare," he said, and pulled his shirts off over his head. The light of the arc reactor shone blue on the man's face, but it was the scars that he meant to show off. "My scars are the same as the injuries that killed the Tony Stark of your universe," he pointed out, fingering the raised lines with a tight smirk.

The Marshall analyzed them without a second look at the arc reactor, which was both a pity and a relief. "How did you survive where he didn't?" he asked, voice hard.

Self-conscious and vulnerable, Tony pulled his shirts back on. "We were both attacked by the Ten Rings on orders of Obadiah Stane, but I got lucky. They got greedy," he said with a shadow of a grin, "They made a doctor rig up an electromagnet that would keep the metal he couldn't remove from puncturing my heart, so that they could try to make me manufacture weapons for them. Instead I made a suit of armor and blasted my way out." He didn't say anything about the car battery or the crushing despair, the certainty that he was going to die there no matter that he had been kept alive for a reason. He didn't mention Yensin's death or the effect that had on him.

But the Marshall seemed to understand. The look in his eyes shifted and his voice was less combative as he asked, "And the others?"

"That all depends on what happened to them in this reality," Tony said reasonably. He wasn't about to give up information for free.

"The woman was killed in Odessa in 2009 on a mission for the CIA. Otherwise, we know almost nothing about her," Pentecost said carefully, "Not even her real name."

Tony snorted. No matter what reality they were in, Nat was a mystery.

Beside him, Steve panted harshly and coughed in his sleep. Blue flecked his lips. Was it getting lighter? Tony wiped it off with a tissue anyways.

"I don't know her real name either," Tony said with a roll of his eyes, "I do know that she lived through that. The scientist she was supposed to protect died, but help got there in time for her." A beat. "Wait, the CIA?" He frowned, not sure what was going on. Were there more differences than he thought?

"Yes, the CIA," Pentecost confirmed. He leaned forward now, a crease developing between his eyebrows.

"In our universe she works for SHIELD. Never the CIA," Tony said cautiously.

This time Pentecost was the one confused. "I've never heard of that organization. Are they a security force?" he asked.

Tony's breath went quick. Things were more different than he thought. "How about HYDRA?" he asked quickly. The moment that the Marshall shook his head, he was getting an idea of just how far back the divergence started. "The Tesseract?" he finally prompted.

"Never heard of it," Pentecost said, "Is there any reason you're asking?" He seemed doubtful that it was anything other than nonsense or a distraction.

"I think I've figured out where the divergences happened," Tony said with a sigh. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes, wishing that this was some awful dream and he would wake up to Dummy spraying him with a fire extinguisher.

The Marshall folded his hands and leaned back, getting comfortable for the story. "Go on," he said quietly.

"This will make me sound even crazier, but the Norse gods are real, at least in our universe. I don't know about this one," Tony said, making a vague gesture at the room around him, "They left behind an object called the Tesseract. It's… powerful. The most powerful thing I've ever seen and I'm in the energy business back home. That in turn led to the creation of HYDRA, the Nazi deep science division in World War II, led by a man obsessed with getting it and using it. He did find it, and did use it. In order to combat him, the SSR rescued the man who had been forced to turn that man into something more than human." He grimaced at the descriptions he had heard about Red Skull, from Aunt Peggy as well as the documents he had hacked.

The Marshall was making no indications of his feelings. Whether he believed the insanity spewing out of Tony's mouth remained to be seen.

To that end, Tony continued. "To combat the threat, the SSR, including my father, initiated Project Rebirth, to make their own super-soldier, and hope that it was a success instead of the mess that the other guy's attempt turned into," he continued, "That's where Steve comes in. He was the test subject, and it worked. He turned from a skinny asthmatic into this and led a team to take down HYDRA. He was lost in the final battle between HYDRA and the SSR and was the inspiration behind the founding of SHIELD. Clint didn't die however he did here and brought in Nat instead of killing her like he was supposed to. I didn't die in Afghanistan, we found Cap in the ice, and then the universe nearly ended but we, an enormous green rage-monster and the Norse god of thunder saved the day. We were putting a sorcerer in his place when we got sucked into a portal and ended up here." It didn't escape his notice that the Marshall's eyes narrowed slightly at the name Clint. Was he familiar?

"Clint, you say?" Pentecost asked.

"Yeah," Tony confirmed, "Know him?" If they had to deal with a second Hawkeye, he was gonna flip.

"The only match to come up for your archer friend is a carnie who died in 1991," Pentecost told him.

For a moment Tony was silent. "Wait, wait, a carnie," he said, hoping that he heard right.

"One Clinton Francis Barton," Pentecost read off a piece of paper.

Tony couldn't help it, not like he tried: he burst out laughing. "Oh, I'm never going to let him live that down!" he cackled, "Francis!" It was even better than the carnie revelation. Not that he'd let that go to waste either.

The look that Pentecost sent him only made him laugh harder. It was somewhere between flat and disbelieving, one eyebrow raised and his face otherwise completely straight. "Is there anywhere I can find records of your friend Steve? The rest I can understand there being very little information on, but there's no one by his name within his age range," he said with an analytical look at the unconscious man on the bed.

"Try looking for a Steve Rogers born on July 4, 1918," Tony advised with a grin. Oh, the look on Pentecost's face after he finds whatever happened to the Steve of this universe… If only he could see that.

The Marshall made a note of it on the papers he held. "I don't know why I believe you," he said solidly, "but I do. So I'm going to make you an offer."

"Is it an offer I can't refuse?" Tony shot back cockily.

From the smirk on the Marshall's face, he understood the reference. It was quickly cleared. "You say that your friend is a super-soldier and he lived through anthrax, among other things. If he either lasts through the night or wakes up, you'll have been telling the truth and the three of you will go to the jaeger academy. If not, the three of you will go to prison until you're ready to help design and build the jaegers," he offered.

The whole thing screamed of a trap to Tony. It would be reckless to take the deal. "Leave Nat and Clint out of it," he demanded, "I'm the one telling you this. If I'm wrong, go after me and not them." If the Marshall refused, the deal was automatically off. He was reckless, not stupid.

The man carefully watched Tony. He seemed to be making a heavy decision, weighing the pros and cons of what he was considering. "Very well," he agreed.

Tony took the offered hand and shook it. It felt like making a deal with Loki.

The Marshall left after that. With a last lingering look at the incapacitated super-soldier, he swept out the door.

In an hour Tony's life had changed. Again. Everything depended on Steve and his will to live now.

"You've never let me down before," Tony told the body laying still in the bed, "Don't start now." He went back to how he had been, using Steve's shoulder as a pillow and his pec to rest the edge of the book on. But he couldn't concentrate very well.

He ended up watching Steve's face for any sign of movement instead. Nothing happened, no matter how he willed it to. Either way, he didn't mind just running his eyes over the high cheekbones and golden eyelashes and strong jaw for as long as he could. It wasn't an option he had very often.

When Nat and Clint finally came back with trays of hospital slop, they stopped and stared. "What did you do now?" the Black Widow asked, ever observant, as she entered the room.

"Either I've saved our bacon or got myself put in prison," Tony said promptly, snatching one of the trays from Clint's hand, "But first…" He turned to the archer with an evil grin. "Why didn't you tell me that you were a carnie?" he asked, faux hurt.

Clint groaned and face-palmed.


	3. On the Road (Again)

Thank you to **Azuyami** , **Mikami92** , and **Perla17** for favoriting! It always makes me happy to see that people like my writing enough to put it on the list.

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 3: On the Road (Again)**

" _Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."_

― _Ralph Waldo Emerson_

Dawn shone through the curtains and a golden figure stirred on his hospital bed. A groan forced its way up his throat and he coughed at the itch it left behind. God, he hadn't felt this weak since the day he first got hit with the plague. What kind of madness had happened this time?

Memories flashed by and he remembered everything. It was an alternate universe and he got hit with something called kaiju blue. From the blood of a monster he helped kill. In an alternate universe. Great.

The dryness of his throat forced him to take action. He heaved his eyes open with more effort than it should have taken and looked around for a carafe of water. Instead he saw a room that reminded him greatly of the nursing home he last saw Peggy in, complete with bland flower paintings. The big difference was that in this room a camp bed held a snoring head of dark hair.

That Tony was here sent a jolt of happiness through Steve. Even with all the excuses in the world to leave, he had stayed. "Tony?" he called hoarsely.

The man jerked awake immediately. "Steve?" he asked, cautious hope in his voice as he sat up.

"Can you get me some water?" Steve requested. His cheeks burned at the need to ask for help with such a basic thing.

"Yeah, of course, anything you want," Tony rambled, springing to his feet to get it. There was a plastic jug on the C-table beside the bed, accompanied by a mug. The moment he splashed some water in the mug, he plopped a straw in it and hesitated before he pushed a button to lift the head of the bed.

It felt strange to sit up but not do it himself. The water that he sucked up gratefully through the straw was worth it. "How long have I been out?" Steve asked once he drained the cup.

"Two and a half days," Tony replied with suspiciously bright eyes, "They kept coming in here yesterday to remove your body. I knew you'd make it, though. You're Captain America. Nothing keeps you down for long." He gave a short bark of laughter that was quickly stifled.

The faith Tony had in him was gratifying. "I don't feel much like Captain America right now," Steve admitted, stretching his arms and legs as best he could. They were stiff and uncooperative.

"No one does when they're sick," Tony said with a wry grin, "Now it's time to shove this in the doctor's face. Don't fall asleep for another two days or seventy years or whatever." He got up from the bed with several cracks of his joints, but ignored that as he hobbled out of the room.

Left to his own devices, Steve smiled fondly at the open door. It was just like Tony to stay at someone's bedside for days and then run off the second they wake up. The smile widened when he heard a woman's shoes tapping on the linoleum floor after the soft patter of Tony's sneakers, and the man explaining that, "Yes, he is damn well awake. I swear to Frigga I'm not lying! See?"

The moment she saw him, the doctor's mouth dropped open. She simply stood in the doorway, eyes bulging behind her glasses, as she stared at Steve, who smiled sheepishly at her.

"Sorry, Tony's a force of nature," he apologized cheerfully. He didn't feel sorry, but it was polite to say so.

Before his sluggish mind knew it, the woman was running every test on him that could be done in a hospital bed with little equipment. The reflex tests, ears, nose, dilation of his eyes, throat (very very light blue, she reported faintly), blood pressure (normal, she said with shock), and heartbeat (well within normal range, she concluded before having to sit down a visitor's chair).

"So doc, what's the prognosis?" Tony asked cheerfully, the cat that caught the canary as he leaned on the end of the bed.

"You, sir, are a medical marvel and if you don't mind, I'd like to run some tests to see what exactly is causing this unprecedented recovery," the doctor said, still staring like she couldn't believe her eyes.

Steve licked his lips as he decided how to word what he was going to say. He had seen exactly what kind of chaos the super-soldier serum and trying to replicate it could cause. The Hulk was the least of it. How could he live with unleashing that kind of Pandora's Box on this universe, which had never needed it?

"I already know what caused it and the side effects are too ridiculous to even think about it," he told her honestly if not truthfully. The agony he went through during Project Rebirth, he wouldn't wish on anyone.

Though she looked unhappy, the doctor nodded and stood up. Pink was beginning to flush her face, but her eyes were still large behind her glasses as she brushed off her slacks. "Alright then Captain Rogers, I'll update your chart and have something brought in for you to eat. Take it slow, don't try to rush. It'll only be soft foods, but if you continue to recover you'll be transferred to solids. I'll be back every hour to monitor your recovery," she told him, business-like, before she left.

The door was shut behind the doctor, and Steve and Tony were left alone. "Is it really that big of a deal?" the super-soldier asked, shifting to get comfortable again.

"Everything I read said that there was no chance. You start coughing up blue, you're dead," Tony said softly. The way he looked at the man in the bed was like a cherished dream had come true.

Not for the first time, Steve was intensely grateful to Dr Erskine and his serum. It let him be here with Tony. As always, he hid that sappy thought and instead gestured to the plastic pitcher of water. "Can I get some more of that?" he requested brightly.

"Anything you want," Tony said, hurrying to do so, "Anything you want as long as you don't fucking sleep." He offered the cup again, half full and straw included.

"Language," Steve chided him, reaching out to hold the mug himself. When the worn hands stayed and helped his own shaky ones balance it, he swore his heart nearly beat out of his chest.

* * *

When Marshall Stacker Pentecost signed into work on December 17, 2019 he thought that he would see a death certificate on his desk. While he believed the strange man who claimed to be the deceased Tony Stark, he needed some kind of proof of his story.

What with Stark having insisted on a Viking funeral, the woman cremated, Barton's grave destroyed by a flood, and no found record of the last, it was the only way. He could prove if nothing else that the man named Captain Steven Rogers was a super-soldier, or that he wasn't. If that was true then the rest automatically became more likely. The thought alone was mind-boggling.

What would a super-soldier even do? What would one be capable of? The video of the aborted kaiju attack only provided glimpses of the possibilities.

However, Pentecost was a deeply practical man. There was no value to daydreaming of what a super-soldier could do if there wasn't one. Until the day it was proven that there was, he would act like he had never heard of the notion and assume that Rogers was ordinary and Stark(?) was insane.

So when he found a stack of a few different papers on his desk that morning, Pentecost was naturally intrigued. Before he left yesterday he had put Stark's hunch into the system. The look he got from the techs when he requested they look for a Steven G Rogers born July 4, 1918 in New York wondered if he was losing it.

Now he held in his hands a birth certificate, a death certificate and various census records. The birth certificate said that a boy named Steven Grant Rogers was born to Sarah Rogers and her deceased husband Joseph in Brooklyn, New York on July 4, 1918. The census records said that he lived with her for at least twelve years and she was a nurse. The death certificate said that he died at age fourteen of pneumonia. There were no pictures and no more detailed information, just the brief promise that this person once existed.

A last paper caught Pentecost's attention. It was out of place with the others, crisp and precise rather than old and poorly preserved. The header of the Franciscan Hospice in Beaverton stared up at him.

Intensely he read the letter through once. Frowning with disbelief, he did so again. A third time finally made it sink in. Releasing it to sit on top of every other piece of paperwork that proved the existence of one Steven Grant Rogers, Pentecost chuckled and shook his head.

No one had ever survived kaiju blue, not young or old or sick or healthy. There was no way to prevent it from progressing once it began poisoning the human body and no way to treat it once a person showed symptoms. Anyone who figured it out would probably get a Nobel Prize.

It looked like he had some application forms to send out, he thought, vaguely impressed.

Captain Steven Rogers had survived the night and woken up at half after five this morning.

* * *

It took three days for Steve to be released from the hospice center, only happening through sheer force of personality. And, of course, the threat that he would leave against their advice if they insisted on keeping him here a single minute longer. From the looks that they gave each other before handing him the paperwork, they decided that the wrath of someone who didn't seem quite human wasn't worth it.

The paperwork had come through from Marshall Pentecost, just as he promised. Packets of forms and requirements and whatnot were piled up in Natasha's arms as she waited with Clint near the doors. It contained all they needed to hitch a ride from Seattle to Kodiak Island, where classes would begin on January third.

The Marshall must have influence everywhere, Steve thought, impressed. Whatever strings the man pulled, he had managed to get identity documents made out for the four of them. All they'd had to do was fill in the blanks and send them back to the Anchorage Shatterdome.

It was lucky that some of those were ration cards, and from the top tier too, Clint explained after an info gathering session. The red ones were for the important people, like Steve remembered A stamps being back in his war days. Theirs were all red.

Looking at the land transportation networks (almost totally destroyed with each kaiju attack) and water transportation (non-existent), it looked like air travel was the only way to go. Then they saw the price of getting anywhere and quickly decided that they were stuck walking. From Portland.

It visibly hurt Tony to be so broke they couldn't even catch a flight. Days later, in the middle of some forest, he was still pouting. He had perked up for a little bit when his skills were able to barter them camping supplies in return for repairing a car, but it was a brief thing.

"Hey, Tony," Steve called. It didn't bother him very much, the walking. The depression and anxiety that his friend displayed was what worried him.

The genius looked up from poking the fire with a stick. "Hm?"

"Do you think we're doing the right thing?" Steve asked in a low voice. Nat and Clint were asleep across the campfire and he didn't want to wake them before it was their turn to keep watch.

"I don't think we really have a choice, Cap," Tony said with a grim smile as he shifted the logs.

Steve hummed thoughtfully. From what he had been told, that sounded accurate. The two choices they had were to go to prison or go to jaeger academy. He didn't want to have to escape from prison. "I have to ask… What has you so worried?" he questioned in a casual voice that betrayed nothing of how badly he wanted to know.

It looked like Tony was going to try to fake him out. Then he remembered that Steve could see exactly when he was lying and deflated, staring sightlessly at the twirling flames. "What use am I?" he asked, almost too quietly to be heard.

"Huh?" Steve wondered if he heard correctly. Tony couldn't have said what he thought.

"You heard me Spangles," Tony snapped quietly, looking away from the fire in order to glare at the blonde beside him.

"I heard you, I just don't understand. Why would you think that you're not of any use?" Steve asked, honestly confused. Was there something he was missing? He wouldn't be surprised; much of the 2010's he still wasn't quite up to date on and now here he was ten years after that in an alternate universe. Everything had gone topsy-turvy. In one day.

The smile on Tony's face was bitter as he turned back to the fire. "I may be a genius, but I require tools and parts to make anything. To get those, I have to have money, which I don't have, and I have no way of getting cash if I don't have the tools," he explained, voice going deeper and more vicious as he spoke, "It's a big fucking cycle that I'm not sure I can get out of without help from that goddamned Marshall, and I fucking hate asking for hand-outs from the government."

It bemused Steve just how much Tony thought he needed to stand alone. "That's when you depend on us," he said with a small smile. He stilled his friend's hand from jabbing at the firewood again.

Tony turned his head, dark eyes broodily demanding.

"Ever since the team formed you've been taking care of us. You house us, feed us, buy us clothes," Steve told the other man, "And before you say it, I know you don't get us designer stuff because anything else would make you look stingy. You do it because you like spoiling us. Do I need to remind you of that advanced copy of Sherlock season four you got because Bruce wouldn't say he wanted it?" He raised an eyebrow.

Mumbling to himself, Tony ducked his head and shrugged. "What, you're my team," he mumbled.

"Exactly. We're _your_ team. You've done everything for us. Now let us do something for you," Steve urged him, slowly leaning in to make his point, "When I was the useless one, you never let me face the world alone. You were always there to answer questions or just sit with me. Now let me help you get on your feet." The smile that tugged at the corner of his lips was sappy and he knew it. In the flickering shadows, for all intents and purposes alone with the object of his affections, he didn't care.

"It's like you said, I'm the one who takes care of you," Tony said quietly, "What'll happen now that I can't?"

It hit Steve like Thor's hammer. Praying he was wrong, he asked, "Do you really think we'd use you like that?"

The silence around Tony said enough. He did. It hurt more than Steve cared to admit that he would think so little of the Avengers, so little of _him._

"You're an important member of our team," Steve said, wondering if this was penetrating Tony's thick skull at all, "Who was it that took that nuke through the portal when the Chitauri came? Who saved me from getting flattened by half a building last week?" He paused, smiling sneakily. "Who takes all the heat when something goes wrong and Fury starts yelling at us?"

"Who else would do it?" Tony responded, somewhere between shy and apathetic.

"You're able to do things that no one else can. You see flaws in my plans and provide other options, even if you do disobey in the process," Steve said, and hoped that he wasn't getting too mushy. "Why would you think that?" He wanted to understand why thoughts like that even crossed Tony's mind. What had happened to him to make him think such terrible things not only about his teammates but about himself?

There was silence for a long time, but that was okay. As long as it got him thinking, Steve was more than willing to wait however long it took to get the answers he needed.

Just when he thought that it wouldn't be tonight, Tony responded. "Everybody wants something from me," he said with a wry twist of his lips, "Women want to brag that they got into my pants, men rub elbows and try to get into my pockets, the feds constantly try to get me to make more weapons… Even my dad just wanted someone to take over his company so that he could retire to look for you full-time. No one but Pepper and Rhodey ever liked me for myself. Not even I do. So why would anyone else?" He spoke with an indifferent tone, but the words that tumbled out of his mouth betrayed him. Every horrible thought he had about himself, every bit of loathing, was plain as day.

It made Steve hurt. This time he couldn't resist and turned his friend's face to look at him. "I will say this one time, and that's it: you're the best thing that's ever happened to this messed up world, and you're one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I like you for yourself. And you should too," Steve said, looking straight into those deep brown eyes he was crazy for, "You drive me up the wall and make me angry and do everything with too much flare and too much flippancy. But you're a man of your word. You don't like innocent people getting hurt, and you'll do anything for the people important to you. You're so smart it makes my head spin and in your own way you care too much about everyone around you, so much that it hurts every time you even think about saying goodbye. But you don't have to, not until your heart stops or ours do. We're not going anywhere because you're Tony. Do you understand me?" He willed the man to, not sure what else he could say before his feelings spilled out more than they already have.

The wonder in Tony's eyes was child-like, almost awe. "Working on believing," he joked, "I get what you're trying to say though, Cap. Thanks." He smiled, and the whole world suddenly felt brighter.

Steve leaned a little closer, their noses almost touching. It would only take another inch, a few more seconds. And Tony wasn't pulling away. No, he stayed right where he was, eyes soft and wide as they watched him intently.

Just another inch…

A noise came from the other side of the campfire and they both jumped back on instinct. When he looked, Steve gave the archer's sleeping body a dirty look. Of course, Clint had to snore right then. He probably wouldn't get up the courage to do that again for another few days if not weeks.

"Well, I think that's a signal to get him up," Tony said with a high-pitched, nervous laugh.

As Tony kicked Clint awake, much to the archer's mumbled displeasure, Steve sighed and got his own bedding ready. It was another two days of walking to Seattle and he already knew the road would be even longer with this unspoken thing out in the open. Well, kind of.

Confusion and disappointment roiling in his gut, he sank down to sleep. At his back, he heard more than felt Tony wiggle into his own sleeping bag. Then their backs bumped together and they stayed like that.

"Night Cap," Tony muttered.

"Good night, Tony," Steve replied. A dopey grin took over his face as he curled into the sleeping bag and pressed his back more firmly to the man behind him. He could live with this.

Several minutes later when they were both asleep, Natasha gave Clint a look. "Did you really have to ruin their moment?" she asked in a whisper.

"What, they were getting ridiculous," Clint complained with an eye roll in the direction of the sleeping men. For how close they were, they may as well have just shared a sleeping bag.

"They were close to getting together," Natasha hissed, displeased.

For a moment, Clint was quiet. "Oh," he replied eloquently.

"Yes, 'oh,' Clint," Natasha said with a dirty look, "If they go back to trying to pretend they don't like each other, or if, gods forbid, it gets any worse, I am holding you personally responsible. Got it?" She knew she looked mutinous and intended to use that to full effect.

Hands in the air, Clint scooted away on the log. "Okay, okay," he agreed hastily.

For a moment they were quiet, watching their teammates somehow intertwine even more through the fabric of their sleeping bags. It was frankly adorable. The goofy grins on both their faces as they pressed together in their sleep made Natasha gag a little bit.

"You know, I never thought Stark felt that way," Clint said more seriously. He was watching the fire now, contemplating what he had blatantly eavesdropped on.

Natasha's lips went tight. Apparently they hadn't done a very good job in appreciating Tony, if he still felt that they might have been using him. "I knew something was wrong, but I just thought that he was paranoid," she murmured.

"How do we fix this?" Clint asked immediately for ideas. That was him, always wanting to solve a problem as quickly as possible.

"For starters, let's not ruin his moments with Steve anymore," Natasha suggested dryly.

Though he grimaced, Clint nodded.

It wasn't much, but it was a start.


	4. School Daze

Thank you to those who followed and favorited! Now if only I could get a reviwer to thank, hint hint...

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 4: School Daze**

" _We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."_

― _Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night_

By the time they got to the combined Lewis-McChord base near Seattle, Steve wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a decent bed. While he was still used to sleeping on the ground somehow, even years after he left World War II behind, he enjoyed the comforts of a soft mattress and fluffy pillows. It was the shower he was really gunning for, to be honest.

Getting into the base was surprisingly easy once they showed their enlistment forms. A guard showed them to four rooms at the end of a corridor and gave them directions to the mess hall with a promise to get them a meeting with the person in charge of the base. It was almost friendly.

The rooms themselves reminded Steve greatly of the helicarrier, but everything here was concrete rather than steel. Only the beds and desks were made of anything but, both of them shiny metal. Satisfied enough, he dropped his bag and headed for the bathroom that was miraculously attached to the room.

When he got out he smirked at his reflection. The blue had almost faded from his skin, leaving nearly everything looking slightly bruised but not like he got a vat of dye thrown on him. It had been a pain to get up here, hiding his face and arms whenever they had to enter a population center because they really didn't need the attention.

As it was, Clint and Natasha stuck out enough. Red hair and an archer were distinctive and their fight with the kaiju had aired worldwide. Luckily, Tony's suit folded down into a suitcase and Steve was able to put his backpack on over his shield. Hats and sunglasses and bags let them get here without more than passing notice.

Not five minutes after he was out of the shower, someone knocked on his door. When he opened it the guard was back and ogling his arms.

Steve cleared his throat, trying to be polite.

The guard snapped out of it, pink-cheeked. "Marshall Maddox will see you now," he said weakly.

The trip through the base was long. They passed through multiple halls and rooms and people on the way there, including a secretary who was actually competent. Like everyone else, she took one look at him and her face twisted in distasteful pity. It really did look like he had gotten his butt kicked to all hell.

When they got to the door labeled 'Marshall Ronald Maddox' the guard knocked and waited respectfully. A voice called for them to come in, and the guard opened the door. "Captain Rogers here to see you," he reported.

"Let him in," said a strangely average voice.

The guard left with a sympathetic smile at Steve, who entered. Respectfully he shut the door before turning around to face the Marshall. "You requested me, sir?" he asked.

In front of the desk sat the rest of the Avengers who were in this alternate universe. While they were in casual stances, he knew as much as anyone that they could spring into action within a few seconds. The moment they saw him however, their shoulders relaxed.

Behind the desk the Marshall, a heavyset man with his blonde hair cropped to the point of almost non-existence, raked blue eyes over him. "You're the one that survived the kaiju blue?" he asked, eyes going to a pile of papers that he shuffled.

"Yes, sir," Steve answered. He hadn't been invited to sit, so he continued to stand just a little less formally than parade rest.

"I waited to tell your friends until you all were here, so I'll not take up more of everybody's time than I have to. You're all welcome to use the Kwoon room, the cafeteria and the other training rooms. The laundry facilities are all open to you and you're welcome to go off-base as long as you return by ten at night and have your ID's," Marshall Maddox told them bluntly, going through an envelope, "We need to make them, so we're going to need pictures. Go out and tell Sam, and she'll get everything taken care of." His eyes turned to them again and he handed each of them a slip of paper.

When Steve read his through, he realized that it was an application for military ID. The section for rank was already filled out: jaeger academy candidate. "Yes, sir," he said, vaguely impressed at the efficiency of the military in this universe. In theirs it would have taken a month to get even to this stage.

It was a quick thing to get their pictures taken and paperwork filled out. The look on the secretary's face as she asked whether he had meant to put down 1918 in his birthdate made Tony and Clint snicker. When he assured her that he did mean it, she took the paperwork without comment. It was appreciated.

From the look on her face, the rest weren't that much better. It may have had something to do with the year being 2019 (and didn't that boggle the brain?) but according to the paperwork, Tony was forty nine and Clint was forty eight. Natasha was still a little unbelievable at thirtyfive, but not so much as to get stared at like the rest.

The days passed quickly after that. The training gym of the Seattle Shatterdome was fully equipped and often enough empty, or at least when Steve and Tony ended up there in the middle of the night when they couldn't sleep. Which was more often than not, honestly. The nightmares caught them both often.

Whenever he had a spare moment, Steve found himself thinking of their home universe. What was going on? Were Bruce and Thor handling things alright by themselves? The possibility that something had gone wrong weighed heavily on him.

While they got curious looks, most of the Shatterdome staff were content to ignore them as more wannabes. The blue on his face and arms were explained as a bad accident at a dye factory during the last kaiju attack. The cafeteria staff seemed to realize that something was up, from how much of their food stock went missing after the four of them came in, but no one ever said anything to them.

Then the last day of August hit, and the four were bundled into a helicopter. It was more like the SHIELD missions that Steve had run since he ended up in this alternate universe. The big things that changed were that he wore combats and the back of his hand almost constantly brushed Tony's.

That in itself was confusing, he thought with occasional glances at the man beside him. There had always been a sort of sexual tension between them, which he had always ignored because it was terrifying. He'd thought that the Serum, and the the ice, had cured him of this disease.

When he had learned in his research that homosexuality was no longer wrong, that it was not longer considered a flaw… Everything changed. His eyes were wide open as he realized that maybe he could have what he wanted for once instead of watching from afar.

The courage that it took to put such thoughts into action was too much for him. Being brave for the sake of others was easy. Never in his life had he backed down from something that could help people who weren't him. When it was only for himself, he almost constantly chickened out.

Like right now, he was taking longing glances at the object of his affection rather than outright saying what he meant to. Or just showing him. Neither was good right now, because they were with four other people not including Natasha and Clint. But soon, or several days previous, or any time since Tony had flown that nuke through a portal to an alien world.

The ride was over too fast, or maybe Steve was just wrapped up in his thoughts too long. The recruits were herded off the helicopter and onto a snowy landing pad surrounded by concrete buildings. They were nondescript government things except for what looked like a giant hangar with extra-tall doors. Perhaps that was the jaeger bay.

They were directed in a set of doors, to the warmth of what looked like a cafeteria. Right now, it looked more like an interview room. At every table was an officer with paperwork in front of them, deadly serious as they examined the recruits. Most of them were busy, allowing those that came in from Seattle to prepare.

"Ready, Cap?" Tony muttered, examining their surroundings. He was unimpressed, from the snort that he gave to the plain concrete surrounding them.

Steve gave him a tight smile in response. In comparison to the five times he tried enlisting back in the 40's, this was nothing.

"You're gonna get tossed out on your face, Shellhead," Clint teased from Tony's other side. He and Natasha were standing close together, almost touching but not quite.

Natasha examined the room much like Tony, but she showed no signs of what she thought. It was one of those things that Steve had gotten used to. If there was anything important, she would tell them.

"Say that in a mirror, Hawkass," Tony returned casually.

That was when several tables emptied, half the candidates being directed through one door and the others through a second. It was obvious that half of them were rejects. But which half?

As a group, the Avengers were selected and shown to four different tables. The one Steve got was occupied by an Inuit woman who glanced impassively at him. "Take a seat. Papers, please?" she requested politely.

The packet was handed over. Steve sat down at the chair indicated and waited patiently, watching the face of the woman as she read over his information. Just waiting for her to ask the inevitable questions.

"You may want to correct this," she told him, pointing at his birthdate.

With a tense smile, he shook his head. "That's correct," he said, pulling out the ID he had been provided. It showed his full name, birthdate and description with picture, proving that yes it was him.

The woman tilted her head as she took it, compared the information and picture to what she saw. "Just to see what'll happen, I'd probably let you through," she mused, handing back the ID, "Now, I need to know who recommended you?" She picked up a pen, poised herself to take notes.

"Marshall Stacker Pentecost," Steve answered.

The interview was remarkably quick for being so in-depth. It was a little tricky to be honest without sounding crazy, but the interviewer said nothing to think of what she thought. Instead she put down the answers he gave, including why he wanted to come to the jaeger academy and what position he was looking to earn. When he said that he honestly didn't know what he wanted out of this, she gave him a penetrating look. "You'd better learn soon," she said to him as she wrote it down, "The full course is a year. Not much time."

Steve didn't tell her that he was grateful for it. That would have sounded bad and he didn't know whether he would still go to prison if he was a wash-out. Again, he didn't want to have to escape. It went against what he stood for, or maybe it didn't, depending on why it was happening. He wasn't entirely sure right now.

A blue stamp was put on his paperwork- ACCEPTED. A slip was filled out and given to him, name, birthdate and student number, and he was directed through the door on the right side of the hall.

Before he could get up, the interviewer gave him what looked like a rare smile. "Good luck to you, Captain Rogers," she told him sincerely.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said with a tight smile of her own. Seeing Natasha lope gracefully through the door to the right, it became more genuine. At least one person he knew had made the cut.

The next room was plain, with no furnishings of any kind. Some of the dozen recruits sat on the floor while others milled around or paced nervously. Natasha leaned on a wall, watching everything around her. The smile she gave Steve when he came in was small but real. "Good to see you, Cap," she said in a low voice when he approached.

"You too. Think Clint and Tony will make it?" he asked, similarly leaning on the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

"Clint, definitely. Tony, I'm not so sure about," Natasha said, the skin between her eyebrows briefly creasing before it smoothed out.

It took a few seconds to understand why. Then it struck Steve, and he grimaced. The arc reactor. Of course, it would be the very thing keeping Tony alive that may separate them in this alien place.

"He's too stubborn to let them do that," Steve said with a faint chuckle. The man had come back from the dead after that portal. If he could do that, he could do this.

The snort that Natasha gave him echoed agreement.

Their faith was rewarded when Clint walked in. He spied them immediately and waded through the room, grinning. "I can't believe they tried getting rid of me because I'm too old," he complained good-naturedly, "Didn't they try that on you?" He peered at Steve pointedly, speculatively, at this.

Steve shook his head, smiling again. "No, she thought it was an error then passed me just to see what would happen," he shared. The punch he got on the shoulder was taken with ease.

"What about Tony?" Natasha asked quietly.

The jovial mood dropped. "He's having some trouble," Clint said, lips twisted, "I didn't hear anything but they looked pretty intense over there."

They all looked to the door when it opened opened again, but it was a young man with a long ponytail.

"What do you think it'll be like?" Steve asked, in order to distract himself from what could be happening to Tony right then. The group being separated was unacceptable, especially not over something like this.

"I heard it's tough, Navy SEAL style tough," Clint shared, seeming amused by it.

Together, the assassins chuckled. Compared to their usual regimen, that was easy. Being superheroes they had to be the toughest in the world, and that meant better than any government could throw at them.

On the other hand, Steve couldn't discount it. "This place is in trouble. Their armies have probably only gotten tougher since…" he trailed off. They knew what he was going to say.

"If they can keep up with us, I'll salute them," Clint said, smirking. He obviously doubted it.

Several more minutes passed and recruits entered the room before finally, the door slammed open and Tony sauntered in. The look on his face as he walked over to his teammates was a devil-may-care smirk. In his eyes, very real relief shone.

"Welcome to the fold," Natasha said mildly, turning her eyes quickly to the door again.

Tony wasn't the last person in; one of the big brass had come in after him and surveyed them with a distant sort of expectation. "Congratulations recruits, you are now in Jaeger Academy," he told them with no small amount of sarcasm, "It's time for your physical exams."

There was a sort of disgruntled resignation as the recruits lined up and followed him through another door. Not for the first time, Steve thought that maybe they should have stayed home. The back of his hand brushed Tony's. It was a small comfort.

All he could do was hope that they wouldn't be separated too quickly.

* * *

The moment Tony was told to take off his shirt, he knew he was going to have to fight for this. More than he already had. Gritting his teeth, he pulled off his two shirts and allowed the glow of his arc reactor to shine in the curtained off alcove.

The moment the blue light shone, the doctor spun on his heel. Obviously he hadn't expected anything like what he saw, because his mouth gaped open slightly. "What's that?" he asked, voice coming out squeaky.

"Arc reactor. It doesn't interfere as long as it stays in my chest," Tony told him bluntly. It really didn't. Nothing damaged it from the outside, even less happened to make it malfunction, and if anything it helped him in his quest to be a superhero, so what did it matter?

Of course the doctor didn't see it that way. "What does it do?" he asked cautiously. The way he stayed on the other side of the enclosure said more than his words ever could. It scared him, like everyone else who saw it embedded in his chest.

The smile Tony gave him was bitter. "It keeps shrapnel from entering my heart and killing me," he said, unimpressed.

The doctor quickly referred him out for an x-ray in the actual medical bay. It wasn't unexpected, but was irritating.

When the results came out, he only gave the doctors his best shit-eating grin. Of all the people in the world, Tony knew just how far into his body the arc reactor went. It almost entirely filled up his chest cavity, pressed into his lungs and was inches from touching his spine. He felt it every second of the day, shocking his heart just to keep it beating and keep the shrapnel from pushing into it. After something like this, any kind of torture was a joke.

"How are you even alive?" the x-ray tech asked, not even bothering to sugar-coat it.

"I think the real question is if it would prevent me from acquiring any position in the PPDC," Tony corrected, lounging on the table they had set him up on, "I have a few references saying that it wouldn't."

No one looked convinced. One actually coughed into a handkerchief pointedly.

"I can prove it." Tony knew that would fascinate them enough to give him a chance. When he was proven right, he smirked and put his shirts back on.

In order to let him put his money where his mouth is, the doctors led him to a training room. In it, Pentecost waited with a raised eyebrow from the other side of a matted floor. On the mats Steve waited in his combat pants and a white undershirt, confused until he saw Tony beat his own chest in signal.

Tony smirked at Captain America as he took off his shoes and stepped onto the mats. "Looks like trial by combat?" he teased the blonde.

"Looks like it," Steve agreed with a reluctant smile. He got into a fighting position, slightly crouched down with fists up.

"This is not a sparring match, there will be no winner. It is a test of whether you can keep up with your condition, Stark," Pentecost told them calmly.

"Yes sir," Tony replied, half-sarcastically. He got into position, almost matching Steve but not quite.

With a nod, Steve's eyes began analyzing his opponent. "Understood," he said, the perfect soldier.

"You may begin at your discretion," Pentecost said. It was the gong ringing out the fight.

As fast as Tony could see, Steve was moving. A fist was in his face with just enough time to dodge to the side. A kick soon followed and was similarly dodged. There was no way that Tony was going to try blocking it, that would break his fucking arms.

It was several minutes of ducking and dodging before either of them scored a hit. Luckily it was Tony, giving Steve a knee to the stomach. Unluckily that got him thrown across the mat. This had gone on long enough, they seemed to decide at the same time. A crowd was gathering, watching them with murmurs of confusion and awe.

Tony could see why they thought that. He watched the security tapes whenever he sparred with his teammates and even he was always taken aback. Usually he was criticizing his performance, planning on how he could improve, but whenever he fought Steve, he stopped and watched. To use a cliche, it was poetry in motion. The way they moved was more like a dance than a fight.

Even now it felt like that. Tony could see the movements that the blonde made before he made them, almost like he was going to do it himself. Each movement spoke eloquently.

It finally ended when he whispered in Steve's ear, "Get me in the chest." They had been locked together, Tony having caught an arm in order to elbow the other in the ribs, while his leg was in position to keep Tony in place.

"You sure?" Steve asked under his breath. He allowed himself to be tossed away by that arm and caught himself in a roll.

All it took was a nod. Tony suddenly had a super-soldier in his face and made a big show of blocking and hitting back and defending against the attacks. A strike to the middle of his chest he didn't interrupt. All he did was use the force to pull Steve with him, making the super-soldier face-plant on the mat between his legs.

Neither of them got up. It wasn't that they couldn't get up, they made it obvious from how they helped each other up with big grins. The faces around them were impressed. It was actually a surprise when there was a round of applause, even including Nat and Clint.

"Satisfied?" Tony asked Pentecost with a raised eyebrow. If not, he was going to flip.

Luckily, Pentecost nodded. "Fit for service," he ordered with a commanding look to the watching doctors.

They didn't argue. Instead he was taken back to the medical enclosure he was first in and did the usual tests. Everything was pronounced perfect aside of where the arc reactor pressed into his heart and lungs. But that was a minor thing according to them, since he had lived with it this long and this hard.

Finally, it was over and he was allowed to leave. From the looks of things he was the last, since the critique laced congratulatory speech began the moment the doors closed behind him. A few more had been culled, he noticed. Now there were probably forty people sitting at the benches, including the other Avengers on the right edge of the room.

Tony slid in on the edge of their bench, bumping hips with Steve in the process. The small smile he got before the man went back to paying attention made Tony's heart beat a little faster. It was pointedly ignored.

Of course, half his attention went to the intro that was being given. Breakfast at 5:00, training from 5:30 until lunch at 12:30 then again from 1:00 to 8:00 in the evening when they would get dinner. Bed at 9:00 and lights out at 10:00. It was exactly like MIT but more martial, with less girls.

Not that the girls were a big reason why he was here, Tony thought with another sneaked look at the American icon beside him.


	5. Time Is On My Side

Thanks to those who favorited and followed! Though some reviews would be nice, hint hint.

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Time is On My Side**

" _How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."_

― _Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex_

The rest of the day was for getting to know each other and the facility. So use it wisely, the drill sarge warned them, because they won't get another chance.

The moment they were dismissed most of the recruits jumped up and began talking. From the next bench over, a girl with a large scar dividing an eyebrow grinned at them. "You're the guys that had that match earlier, right?" she asked in a rolling Southern American accent of some sort.

"Yeah. I'm Steve Rogers and these are my friends Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton," the big blonde replied with a sunny smile.

"Concepcion Damascus," the girl introduced as she came to stand in front of them with thumbs hooked into her pockets, "What was that about? I never heard of that happening before." She looked curious rather than condemning or in awe.

It was probably why Tony was so willing to answer her questions with a charming smile. "I had to prove that I can keep up, and what better way than to fight a young buck like this?" he asked hypothetically, with a wink up at the blonde beside him.

Steve's cheeks went pink, and only got darker when he heard Clint snicker behind him.

The day passed quickly. People came over to introduce themselves and (more often than not) flirt with Steve or Natasha, but were usually scared away by Clint or sweet-talked away by Tony. It was a well-established routine and almost a comfort. Everything was too new and different for them otherwise.

Lunch came and went, and the food wasn't all that bad. Better than everything at SHIELD.

Upon seeing the barracks, Tony shrugged. "Better than that stupid cave," he muttered as he claimed the bed above Steve's.

"I'll take it over Azzano any day," the blonde said with a smile, "Less crowded." He got strange looks for that, and Tony could see why. They probably hadn't seen the pictures of the rescued GI's crowding two or (in Steve's case) three to a bed.

All thirty seven of them left (three of their number had been sent home over blood test results) were crammed together in a space the size of the helicarrier conference room. Each had a locker for their things and a shelf above the head of their bunk, but that was all the storage available. There were ten bathrooms total.

Everyone started taping up pictures and otherwise personalizing the space they had claimed as theirs, chattering excitedly all the while. It made Tony feel bereft to realize that he didn't have anything. Though Steve setting his shield beside Tony's armor, which was in suitcase form, at the foot of their bunkbed made him smile.

"Is that really a shield?" asked a guy who could barely have been old enough to drink. He had paused in putting his things away to look and cock an eyebrow disparagingly.

It made Tony's teeth grind together. This was the near-indestructible shield of an American icon, both of which his dad had a hand in making, thanks for asking.

On the other hand, Steve was more accepting. He probably got shit like this all the time. "You'd be surprised how handy it is," he said conversationally, polishing the thing with his sleeve before he set it back down.

"Are you LARPers?" the girl beside them, Mai or Kai or something foreign, asked them both interestedly. Her eyes went from one member of their quartet to the others with shining dark eyes.

"Larper?" asked Steve, confused. He looked to Tony for a definition.

"Live-action roleplayer. They make a story and then act it out, usually fantasy genre. With wizards and shit," Clint provided, proving that he knew his geeky pursuits. Gold star on his forehead.

The girl's face fell slightly. "Oh, I guess not," she mumbled, clearly embarrassed as she went back to her unpacking.

The girl who was unpacking the bunk below her snickered.

Not for the first time, Tony wondered what he had been thinking with all this. They were all brats, military or not. "We and our friends had a D&D campaign going back home, but things got a little messy when we got shipped out here," he shared with a shark-like grin, "No live action though, somebody would get accidentally killed by the end of the night. I already have to replace my dining room once a month."

Even Nat smirked at that, clearly remembering the incident where Darcy finally got fed up and punched Steve for trolling her.

From the snarky grin on his face, the blonde was thinking the same thing. "We're mostly too busy for anything not work-related," he added, moving the conversation to somewhat safer waters.

Not much though; everyone seemed to want to ask questions. By the end of it Clint was back to being a carnie, Nat was a ballet dancer (where that came from, Tony wasn't sure), Steve was an army boy again, and he was a nutty inventor. Which was basically the truth. Except he wasn't nearly as bad as they claimed, he couldn't be.

The look that he got from Nat refuted his protests. It shut him up too, because no matter how well they knew each other she still scared the living shit out of him.

It got a good laugh from most of the room, so Tony counted that as a win. They'd need to band together to survive this bullshit.

That was proven at four o'clock the next morning, when they were woken by an airhorn. "Up, up, everybody up!" shouted that douche Clarkson, who paced the room to make sure there were no stragglers.

It was an automatic reaction to dive as far from unknown voices as possible. Tony fell out of the narrow top bunk, holding his arc reactor protectively, and didn't realize he was even falling until Steve caught him.

"You okay?" the blonde asked, somehow too fucking awake for this goddamned hour.

"What the fucking fuck?" Tony groaned and shot the drill sergeant the middle finger. It was still pitch black, so the asshole probably didn't see it.

He didn't, considering that he didn't yell into Tony's face. Instead he shouted at them to get their asses dressed and to the Kwoon room right then. Also, it would be just as dark in the halls as in here and he wouldn't be babysitting them on the way. To prove it, he left when everybody was still getting their shit together.

"This is the sort of shit you put up with at boot camp, Spangles?" Tony groaned as he pulled on a pair of pants.

"Almost," Steve said dryly, before he raised his voice over the irritated mutterings, "If anyone has a flashlight, please turn it on."

The command in his voice assured that two of them turned on, one after a great deal of fumbling. The other was Clint's.

"Okay, good. We need to get there without getting separated. There's no telling what they're going to try to pull," Steve continued in his 'I'm Captain America, so do what I say,' voice. In the dim light, his eyes glinted pale blue.

The idiot across the room from them pulled on a shirt. "And how are we supposed to do any of this?" he questioned.

There was a moment when Steve thought about it, his eyes roving the room as he laced up his boots. "Everybody get dressed and form a line. Clint, you take the middle with your flashlight, you over there, what's your name?" he pointed at the geeky kid with the other one.

"Taffy," the kid replied calmly, fixing his glasses.

"Taffy, I'm going to borrow yours and take the rear. Tony," Steve turned to the inventor with a nod, "you take point." He finished with his outfit and crossed the room to speak with Taffy.

"Doesn't he need a flashlight?" asked Mai, entirely reasonably.

Rather than responding, Tony peeled off both his shirts. The blue glow of his arc reactor lit up the room better than the flashlights, revealing awed and horrified faces. "Call me a human nightlight," he replied dryly, "Plus I remember how to get there. Any more questions?"

When he looked around, he saw nothing. Not even the idiot across from them had anything to say, though he stared, transfixed, at the arc reactor.

After that, the assembly was done without question. Each following the person in front of them with the light, they ghosted through blackened corridors that made Tony's neck rise with the stillness and silence. Only the footsteps of the groupe reminded him that he wasn't in space again, he wasn't about to die.

As minutes passed and nothing happened, most of the group seemed to relax. Whispered conversations tried to start up but Clint, Nat or Steve shushed them. No, they needed to be able to hear anyone sneaking up on them.

By the time they got to the Kwoon room, the Avengers were suspicious. What kind of test was this if nothing happened in the meanwhile?

The lights were on and Tony blinked several times to allow his eyes to adjust when he opened the double doors. "That was anticlimactic," he commented as he opened the door further to allow everyone else through.

They all milled around in the room, now chattering quietly, until the instructor got there. He blinked in surprise at them before he raised an eyebrow. "You're fast. That's good," he told them in a disparaging tone, "You will need it to get through the training here. Now, I want you to line up from oldest," he pointed at the far left of the room, "to youngest." He pointed at the far right wall.

At least here the startling age differences were going to come in handy, Tony thought with a snicker as he took his place next to Steve at the far left. On his other side Clint stood, and beside him Nat. The rest had to actually communicate to figure it out.

"What's your birthdate?" asked the geeky kid, Taffy, of Nat.

"November 22, 1984," she answered dispassionately.

Taffy gave her a startled look and took his place a few people down.

It was a little over five minutes before the line was formed. The instructor went from the youngest (December 21, 2002) on. Some people had to switch spots and one unfortunate soul was dragged a few places to the right, but for the most part it went swimmingly.

Then the instructor got to Nat with an expectant expression. The woman next to her was April 15, 1992.

Again Nat stated her birthdate, and was passed with a conceding dip of the instructor's head.

"January 7, 1971," Clint rattled off.

This time the instructor paused. "Is that the truth?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Clint said with a smirk.

There was no further comment, the instructor letting him be despite a dubious look.

"May 29, 1970," Tony said without being prompted.

Again, there was nothing said. It was actually kind of insulting when he remembered that it was 2019 and according to the records he was forty nine years old. Was he really looking it? As the instructor passed on to Steve, he hoped he wasn't going more grey. Or gods forbid, getting wrinkles.

Already, the instructor didn't believe what he was seeing. "And you?" he asked, obviously expecting another 1970 baby or a mistake. Probably a mistake.

"July 4, 1918," Steve told him with a hint of a smile on the corner of his lips.

Murmuring broke out around the room as the instructor broke out a tablet. "Name, son?" he asked with an unimpressed look at Steve. He expected a lie to be found out.

"Steven Grant Rogers," the blonde answered without missing a beat.

Tony grinned with satisfaction. Having people try to guess Steve's age was one of his favorite party games, and he didn't even have to initiate it this time.

It was obvious when the record was pulled up. The instructor looked from the record up to Steve and then back again before he blacked out the screen. "Okay," he muttered to himself, "Okay…" He obviously didn't believe it, but was forced to go along with it.

When Tony looked over, Steve's amused expression was wiped from his face.

"We have you everywhere from sixteen to… a hundred and one," the instructor said, discomfort flickering across his face, "and unable to form a damn line without having to be corrected." He gave them a disapproving look that didn't quite eclipse Steve's.

When they were told to line up again, this time by birthday from January first to December thirty first, Tony sighed and slouched to near the middle.

The day only went south from there. From being shown the fifty two positions of jaeger bushido to Nat getting pissed and putting the instructor in a headlock with her thighs, it was a mixture of boredom and reprimand that never seemed to stop. Only lunch made a difference, and they (especially Steve) were too busy scarfing down their food to relax.

Nine at night came and most of the recruits dragged themselves back to the dorm. With various noises of relief and discomfort they flopped onto their beds, or someone else's if they didn't feel like climbing a ladder. Only the Avengers weren't worn out.

No, Nat and Clint were dissecting the movements shown and listing them into different styles of martial arts while Steve drew and Tony fiddled with a piece of scrap metal he had pilfered from Portland.

"How are you not falling over?" demanded the asshole, whose name turned out to be Bryan.

Nat's response was a shrug. "We train harder than that every day." She was testing out the movements shown, finding ways to smoothly tie them together into something that could kick ass.

The look she got was not encouraging. "What do you _do_ to deserve that kind of punishment?" Taffy asked from where he laid bonelessly on his bedspread.

"Job necessity," Clint cited, "To be a circus acrobat, you need to extremely flexible and able to get the hell out of the way of a scared elephant. Control over every part of your body is part of that. It's how I got to swallowing swords and breathing fire on top of the rest of it."

Interestedly, Tony watched the man take one of Nat's taser rods and (once it was firmly off) stick it straight down his throat. He knew that Clint was usually the one to carry any messages needed, and had seen his system, which was disgusting. It involved lowering a dead drop spike down his throat and tying it around a back tooth, then pulling it back up again when needed. This was the logical and admittedly awesome conclusion to that.

Meanwhile, the rest of the room was questioning Steve about how he looked so damn good for his age. It was a shame they couldn't tell anyone about the serum. The answers given would be unsatisfactory.

"Are you really over a hundred?" Mai asked from a bed across the room. She was one of those that had flopped over, uncaring that she hung off the sides of the bunk.

Pausing in his drawing to give her a smile, Steve nodded. "A hundred and one, this July," he said.

Tony snickered at the concept that Captain America was born on Independence Day. If he hadn't seen the records for himself, he would have believed it was a PR stunt.

"Then how are you…?" Mai continued, waving a hand lazily at him.

And didn't Tony know what she meant. He looked up from his project to give Steve a lascivious grin and rake his eyes down that ridiculously perfect form. "Top secret, he's under contract with the US military," the inventor said smoothly, "but however it happened, god bless America."

On the bed beside them, Clint barked out a laugh.

Steve's shyly appreciative look made Tony wish there weren't so many people around. Then he might be able to get up the guts to actually say what was on his mind.

 _God bless America for allowing you to be here with me._


	6. Brain Damage

Holy crap, thank you **Kae Richa** for your three reviews! Not to mention your willingness to navigate a whole new fandom in order to read my writing. That's seriously flattering. So, so many thanks.

This was a hard chapter to write, and you'll see why later. But it needed to be done and the scene was horribly fun to write.

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright. I do own Concepcion, Bryan, and Taffy.

* * *

 **Chapter 6: Brain Damage**

" _All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."_

― _Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters_

The days were a systematic blur of strength and speed training combined with martial arts, often interrupted sleep, and a systematic test of who would be driven to murder or suicide first. Within two weeks, three people had no choice but to bow out.

Tony himself was an expert on being perfectly functional with little sleep. So when he did knock out and the group was woken in the middle of the night as a test, he managed with little difficulty. The rest of the Avengers were similar, though the severity and volume of their complaints varied greatly from zero (Nat) to nearly getting his face rearranged (Clint).

Four weeks in, things were getting ridiculous. Everyone besides the Avengers were in a constant stupor, only staying awake and functional through the magic that is coffee and power naps. It was close enough to their usual on-call schedule that the Avengers didn't have much of a problem, but the sinking morale of the facility itself was getting to be one.

That was probably why Tony hacked into the intercom system right before lunch, snickering the whole time. They needed a little fun right now.

When he danced his way into the cafeteria, singing along to "Dancing Queen", everything stopped.

That didn't bother Tony one bit. He relished in being the center of attention and grabbed Clint by his jacket to dance along.

Luckily, Hawkass went with it. He even had some pretty good moves, including lifting Tony up like a figure skater over his head.

The rest of the room watched, dumbfounded, as two of the most capable and experienced fighters of the lot finished with a flourish and a dip. That was a different view of the room, Tony thought, as he hoped that he wouldn't be dropped. It always hurt to fall on his head, no matter how many times it happened.

The music stopped and there was silence so complete that Tony was reminded of the zero decibel room that he had only been able to stand for three minutes. He was hoisted to his feet and took a bow, grin firmly in place.

That was when the first startled applause broke out. Gradually people got into it until there was actually a standing ovation, beginning with Steve. The smile on his face lit up the damn room.

Until Colonel Wright came in. Then everything went quiet again. He was one of those that no one in their right mind wanted to be around more than necessary, more tolerated with gritted teeth than respected by the students. Or the staff.

"Good performance," he complimented, smiling at Tony and then Clint. That wasn't a good sign.

Both Avengers traded looks. What was the punishment going to be for this?

"It looks like we're not working the two of you hard enough. I expect an extra half mile run and a thirty rep set from each of you by the end of the day, gentlemen," Wright said almost pleasantly before he left again.

When it was just the students again, Clint smacked Tony on the back of the head. "Way to go, Shellhead," the archer commented sarcastically.

It was taken with a grin and trip to the serving area. From the renewed cheer of the room, Tony's little routine did exactly what he meant it to.

That was the turning point in the spirits of their classmates. Where before they had been gloomy and constantly tired, their ropes fraying fast, now there was a hint of mischief everywhere. From smart quips to all the kwoon staffs being mysteriously arranged into a jungle gym one morning (Tony was sure that was Taffy's fault), they became determined to find fun wherever it might be to balance out the grueling training.

Then on week nine, "Black Widow Baby" began blasting through the intercom when Nat walked into the cafeteria. With a smirk she sauntered to the serving area and got her food, fully in time with the song.

In awe, Tony watched until the woman was sitting beside Clint at the end. He looked her straight in the eye, quirked an eyebrow, and said, "This is war."

Even as Steve facepalmed, Nat replied nonchalantly, "I expect nothing less."

Oh, it was on. Even as Steve asked them to _please_ not do anything they would be kicked out for (like repetitively hacking the servers just to play their theme songs as they entered a room) Tony plotted ways to get maximum impact out of his turn.

The next day, Tony had it timed right to the second: when he began his first combat match, "Shoot to Thrill" poured out of the speakers. Needless to say, he won by the time the song finished.

Two days after that Clint walked into the Kwoon room to the title theme of a children's tv show they had found out was about a superhero named Hawkeye. By now, even Major Thompson knew just to sigh and get on with it.

That Friday, Tony sneaked into the lunchroom at the end of the rush. By now it was easy to get into the intercoms and sneak away before he was caught. He had to keep from snickering to himself as Concepcion wondered when Steve was going to get to his "theme song", or if he even knew how to get into the sound system. She got her answer quickly.

The first notes blared and the Americans automatically jumped to their feet, hands over their hearts.

Only Nat and Tony stayed sitting, the former giving the latter a disbelieving look. It was met with a wink.

Steve entered the room to "The Star Spangled Banner", shield in hand and big goofy grin on his face. That night he was unofficially voted as having the best theme song, right ahead of Hawkass.

For a week or so, everything settled down as far as their pranks and contests went. Of course Tony kept mouthing off and Nat constantly freaked everyone out by appearing from nowhere. Steve kept defying the meaning of the word impossible just to make everyone question their eyes and Clint made everyone wonder if the base was haunted through his habit of going through the ventilation, often using it to get into the officers' rooms and mess with their possessions.

Training kept amping up. Now they were learning basic fencing, which for Tony was a breeze. He had grown up doing this kind of shit. It was a rich people thing.

Then, one day, a projector began playing a clip he forgot he had stored in his phone. "Who's strong and brave, here to save the American way?" showgirls sang as a man in tights and a stupid winged helmet made a speech about buying war bonds. It was like a train wreck, no one could peel their eyes off the video.

When the doors opened to admit Steve during the chorus, he went red in the face and slipped straight back out of the room. Look who wouldn't be going to lunch today out of sheer embarrassment.

It was Tony's turn to give Nat a look, asking what the hell she thought she was doing.

The bewildered shrug she gave was convincing. It might have even been real.

Only after Wright sarcastically began referring to Steve as Captain America did Tony figure out who did it: Clint broke down howling with laughter at the look on the bigger blonde's face.

The next day just in time for dinner, Tony rigged up a video of Clint swinging off various buildings to the tune of, "I'm a bird, motherfucker."

Tony's confrontation with Loki as seen from the tower's cameras was shown two days later, with strategic words bleeped out. "Please tell me you're here to appeal to my humanity," Loki chuckled. "Uh, actually I'm here to (bleep) you," his film self replied, falsely nonchalant, to gasps and laughter from the jaeger academy students. "You should have left your armor on for that," Loki replied with a sinister smirk.

And so it went.

By the end of the second semester, a new, creatively edited, and increasingly embarrassing video clip was regarded as standard meal entertainment. Only Steve didn't get involved beyond shockingly evil suggestions, as he had no idea about the programs needed. It didn't mean he got away squeaky clean.

Near the end of the second semester the academy cut nearly a quarter of the class. They could go on to be Shatterdome support staff, but they were considered unfit for piloting. Mai left happily, wishing the Avengers, Concepcion, and Taffy well in their ambitions. Unfortunately, Bryan was kept on.

The brain scans were weird, with the doctors tutting and heatedly whispering over the results Tony gave. He smirked as he overheard comments about difficulty finding a partner.

Personality testing was hellish. They all came out emotionally and mentally drained, even Nat. She was just better at hiding it than the rest of them.

Tony's turn had not been pleasant. Of course, he knew what the results would say: arrogant, self obsessed, genius, playboy, distrusting and disrespectful of authority figures, attention seeking. What he didn't expect to see when Nat kidnapped the files was the stamp of approval under the words tactical, innovative, charismatic, confident, extraordinary resilience, emotionally damaged, paranoid, anxious, daredevil. It almost left him speechless.

These people really went in depth, he saw when he took a peek at the other files Nat borrowed without permission. Of course her remarkable emotional control and cold rationality were mentioned, but so were the emotional scars "remarkably similar to child soldiers deployed in sub-Saharan Africa". Clint was called far seeing and an instinctive combatant but unimaginative.

When he got to Steve's report, Tony slowed down and at the end raised an eyebrow. "Is there anything we should know, El Capitan?" he asked leadingly.

"Hm?" Steve asked as he pored through Clint's folder.

"Captain Rogers is a tactical genius on par with the greatest minds in history," Tony read out, "and prefers to lead from the front in a command structure that inspires loyalty to each other as well as the cause he fights for. However, this leads him to take unorthodox and self-sacrificing risks that may be a remnant of survivor's guilt. Regularly scheduled mental health checks advised due to possible suicidal behavior." The psychologists here really didn't mince their words.

The captain had the audacity to give him that butter won't melt in my mouth smile. "You know me, I always end up doing things that would be suicide for normal people. They don't know I have the serum," he pointed out sensibly.

It was lucky they were in a rather large, deserted office, Tony thought. If anyone knew they had these folders, they would be in deep shit.

"Are you suicidal?" Clint asked bluntly, concern obvious as he looked at their leader.

This time, Steve's smile was more genuine. "No," he denied, looking from one face to the next, stopping at Tony's, "Not anymore."

The inventor was sure his heart tried to beat straight through his arc reactor.

They all went back to reading, accepting Steve's answer at face value. Though Tony was sure he wasn't the only one who realized that the Avengers were what pulled the world's first superhero back from the edge.

* * *

Then came drift sync testing and pons training, and they were all thrown for a loop. The simulations and their results were unsurprising for the Avengers; they were used to fighting things much bigger than them and winning. Also unsurprising was that Tony adjusted the quickest, having years of experience as the pilot of a suit of power armor under his belt.

What was a shock, especially for Steve, was how quickly the man out of time adjusted to this new method of combat. Where he usually wondered with frustration why there were so many buttons, the sim had him calling attacks and pressing options like it was second nature. The one thing that really got in his way, and Nat's, was having to wait for the armor to keep up with their movements.

He still set the record for fastest kill without weapons at five minutes, thirty one seconds.

It was after his twenty sixth drop (and twenty sixth kill) within the simulation that he was taken for drift compatibility testing. The room he entered was much like the other labs, Steve thought, with scientists running around everywhere and a multitude of machinery. When he looked at who he was being tried against he couldn't help smiling. "How are you?" he asked.

Taffy grinned shyly up at him, then went back to gazing around with wonder in his eyes. "Amazed I actually made it this far," he admitted, blinking rapidly a couple of times. He was still getting used to wearing contacts instead of the coke bottle glasses he had arrived with.

"I know what you mean," Steve replied with a little smile. Of course he did. That was how he felt in his entire time at Camp Leigh in 1943.

They were soon herded into a pair of chairs that looked like the unholy love child of a dentist's chair and a salon hair dryer. The domes were fixed over their heads by technicians as the lead scientist told them what to expect.

"You've already trained yourselves into ignoring the RABIT's and getting past triggers," she said in a no nonsense tone, "Now it's time to see if you can handle the backlog of each other's RABIT's."

That was the one area Steve had trouble with, he admitted with chagrin. The first couple of times his connection to the machine had been too strong and Tony had to hack in to shut it down. But he had learned the tricks of the trade. Surprisingly, the training helped him control his nightmares as well.

The equipment was set up and the lead scientist instructed them to tell her if they feel any pain.

"Five, four, three, two, one," another scientist counted down.

The sudden pull into Steve's own mind made him automatically panic (though nowhere near as bad as Clint had) but he clamped a handle on it before the machinery could be affected. Instead he focused on letting memories flow through his mind's eye, pictures with no sound. That some of these weren't his was a curiosity, but he forced himself to not engage.

It seemed like the bridge was going well. Then they got to the memories of Project Rebirth and it all went haywire.

Pain wracked Taffy's mind, which flooded over to Steve's and back around in an ever increasing feedback loop. Even when they were past that, it only got worse. The perceptions of Captain America were too intense, a normal mind unable to handle the influx of sensory information. Taffy's brain was overloading and even as Steve was viewing his memories of the Howling Commandos, then the ice, he could hear the other man screaming.

Through sheer force of will Steve yanked back, separated himself from the shorter blonde despite that it made his brain burn. He handled it with gritted teeth. No pain had ever been as intense as what happened during Project Rebirth and this didn't change that.

The pons training machine was shut down and suddenly Steve was only experiencing his bodily surroundings. It was a shock, but his mind quickly reorganized.

Taffy. What was happening to Taffy?

When he looked, Steve found himself horrified. The blood vessels in one of the other man's eyes had burst, turning the whole thing red like in that movie Clint loved. Blood poured from Taffy's nose and his fully body trembled like he was being electrocuted. It only got worse when he was touched, the sensations so intense that he screamed at the slightest contact.

"What happened?" Steve demanded hoarsely as he watched a gurney get rushed away, Taffy writhing in pain on it.

The lead scientist surveyed him with a milk white face. "I- I don't know," she answered in a stammer, "The closest I've ever seen to that is the original tests where we discovered that solo piloting causes a neural overload." She pulled herself together remarkably quickly and began to order the whole room around.

It wasn't until Steve tasted something metallic that he realized his own nose was bleeding. Absently he stuffed a tissue in his nostril and, when allowed, left.

Outside the doors, the other students anxiously waited their turns. Upon seeing Steve's bloody nose some of them went pale.

"What happened in there?" Concepcion asked faintly, "Why was Taffy yelling? Where is he?" She had grown remarkably fond of the bright-eyed young man over the past months.

"I don't know what happened," Steve told her, still a little dazed, "They rushed him out on a gurney."

Ever the mother hen, Tony pushed him down onto a chair and began to inspect him. "Pulse is a little high, pupils contracted…" he muttered to himself as he did basic tests. Upon messing with the tissue in Steve's nose, he swore with surprise. "Holy shit, your nose is still bleeding!"

When he looked, Nat and Clint exchanged worried glances. "Is this a normal reaction?" the latter asked the other students disbelievingly.

The answer was negative.

By the time Steve's nose stopped bleeding, the head scientist appeared in the doorway. "Captain Rogers?" she called.

"Yes, ma'am?" he responded immediately. In the past ten minutes he had mostly recovered, only a headache remaining.

The scientist sighed with relief and adjusted her glasses. "You look fine, but I'd like it if you went to medical to get checked out," she instructed. Looking at Tony, she added, "If you would make sure he gets there, Mr Stark?"

The inventor offered a hand to Steve. "Come on, up you get, Spangles," he teased half heartedly.

It was taken and the blonde had the strange thought that he would feel so much better if that hand was on his head, raking through his hair. He squeezed his eyes shut before he opened them again. It was the headache talking, it had to be.

"The rest of you, I'm afraid that you get a break from compatibility testing until we repair the electronics," the lead scientists announced to shocked murmurs, "The last test completely fried them. Thanks for your patience with us. Dismissed." She then whirled around to re-enter the lab, already issuing orders.

"What happened in there?" Tony asked, audibly bewildered, as he guided the big blonde through the now familiar concrete halls.

"Taffy's brain overloaded," Steve admitted in a whisper. Guilt was beginning to well up, knowing that he was the cause.

Any shock Tony felt was quickly wiped from his face. "I knew you were extreme, but goddamn," he commented with false lightness.

Steve only felt guiltier. He should have said something, but what could he have said? It had been years since he was faced with the differences between normal humanity and his own serum enhanced body and he had forgotten.

When they entered the medical wing, a doctor immediately set upon them. "Sit down," he ordered Steve, almost shoving him onto an examination table.

The usual tests were performed and most results came back normal. Pulse and blood pressure were fine, pupils were a little constricted but quickly regaining their usual size. Reflexes were the same as ever, hearing and throat perfectly healthy. Just to be sure, despite that everything _looked_ fine, more in depth scans were ordered.

"We need to be sure that you are not bleeding in the brain," the doctor explained when he was given a look wondering if he was serious.

Steve could see the sense in that. He allowed himself to be put through three different machines without protest. They all declared that there was nothing wrong.

That in itself felt not right, Steve thought, disturbed, when he was given a clean bill of health and told that after a day of rest he would be right as rain. Taffy obviously had brain damage and he was fine. What on earth happened?

News came back later that day: the memory and sensory centers of Taffy's brain were damaged and one eye was permanently blinded. He would be unable to even live on his own from now on, never mind pilot a jaeger.

The therapist they sent to help Steve deal with his guilt over the incident was stonewalled at every opportunity due to the "contract with the military" about the serum. While the feelings of responsibility for what happened were able to be dealt with, the cause of it was left untouched. Probably not the best of circumstances.

While he couldn't talk to a professional about anything to do with the serum, Steve found himself confiding in the other Avengers quite often. It would have to be them. They were the only ones who already knew.

Everyone else had developed a sudden fear of being too close to him.

The worst part was that Steve couldn't blame them.


	7. eHarmony's Got Nothing On This

Many thanks to my loyal reviewer, **Kae Richa**! Yep, you're in the thank you notes. Who else would be? :P I fully support the idea of watching Pacific Rim over Memorial Day weekend. I have a viewing every Independence Day, myself. Hopefully you liked the movie and it helped you to better get what was going on here. A lot of information also comes from the wiki, though I'm playing hard and fast with the timeline.

* * *

 **Chapter 7: eHarmony's Got Nothing On This**

" _Get busy living or get busy dying."_

― _Stephen King, Different Seasons_

It was only after the repaired machinery was thoroughly tested for safety and extra surge protection built in that compatibility assessments restarted. There was a distinct lack of any Avengers for the first few rounds. Not that they were complaining.

When one of them finally was tested, it was Clint. The whole base seemed to hold its breath while he and Concepcion were tested. When they both came out of it undamaged, the tension snapped and it was almost normal again. Though Concepcion was exceedingly wary of Nat and Clint for a while, with every right to be.

Several matches were made outside of the Avengers, mostly cousins and siblings. Some were long term friends. There was a married couple who were paired up and deliriously happy about it.

The next time an Avenger was tested for compatibility, it was Nat and the woman she was paired with was carted off a blubbering wreck. After that, even Steve felt a little wary of the assassin. What could she have possibly experienced that was bad enough to drive a woman crazy?

Possibly the only good thing to come out of that incident was the idea for Nat and Clint to be paired up. They came out triumphant. "Sad to say, I'm off the market," the archer announced when they reappeared afterward.

Steve thought it was ridiculous that it took the scientists this long to try it.

A third recruit was wheeled away on a gurney after Tony's first try. "Didn't have the processing power," the genius said about the man, with a guilty little smile as he tapped his temple.

"I know how you feel," Steve told him sympathetically. Taffy's fate was still heavy on his heart.

It was like a lightbulb went off in Tony's head. The same look as he had after Coulson's death flashed across his face as he barged back into the lab without fanfare.

When Steve looked at Nat, her head was tilted to the side in consideration. "I can see it," she commented randomly.

Tony's head peeked out the door. "Come on, Spangles. Looks like we finally get to duke it out," he joked, though the look in his eyes was serious.

Suddenly, Steve knew what was going on. "No way," he protested, alarms ringing in his head, "I won't do it. I won't let you-" He was cut off by the irritated, elated genius.

"We're the best possible match for each other," Tony interrupted, "and they learned from what happened last week. The second one of us, probably you, shows distress, they're shutting it down." He grinned recklessly. "Come on Cap, live a little," he urged.

It was a bad idea. A very bad idea. Steve re-entered the lab anyways and took a seat on the right hand chair. Out of the corner he watched Tony settle into the left side, jealous of the calm the other man displayed.

"Due to both of your mental volatility, the moment we see any sign of distress in either of you, we're going to pull the plug," the head scientist, who it turns out was Dr Lightcap herself, told them firmly, "We've explicit instructions detailing a list of unpleasant things that'll be done to us if either of you are irreparably damaged that we have every wish to avoid. Are you ready?" She looked at them warily and excitedly.

"Absolutely," Tony answered with a confident smirk.

"Yes, ma'am," Steve answered more reluctantly.

"Five, four, three, two, one," another scientist counted down.

Memories rushed by and everything took the now familiar blue hue of the drift. In silence Steve watched his younger self pull himself through life by the fingernails, and got glimpses of Tony turning into the genius he was today. Fear pulled at the super soldier but he kept a tight lid on it.

Warm compassion seemed to wrap around him, a sweater on a cool night.

Project Rebirth came and went, but there was no reaction. Only the emotions changed, shock and anger and wonder as Dr Erskine was murdered and the villain apprehended.

Tony's time in Afghanistan was horrifying. This time it was Steve sending out waves of sympathy, sharing his own experiences soon after as he remembered first losing Bucky and then being encased in ice for seventy years.

As they adjusted to being in mental contact they instinctively began to share and prod at memories, controlling the flow rather than letting them pass by. When an unusually powerful memory would come up, like Stane's betrayal or Tony falling from that portal, the less affected of the two would gently coax the other into a less potent memory. When Steve found himself waking up in a tank of water that he could somehow breathe and panicking because he thought he was in the ice again, Tony led him to a memory of cave diving in the Maldives. An errant memory of the blackness of space was replaced with Steve and Bucky stargazing and making stupid plans to take over the world.

Though it seemed like their entire lives had passed again, it could only have been seconds.

Steve's eyes popped open and he smiled. Instead of just seeing his own overwhelming perceptions, he also saw the equations that Tony thought in. Angles and numbers littered every surface of the room, with or without words describing any other thoughts the genius had. And there were a lot of those. The speed of the other man's thoughts was astounding, the depth awe-inspiring.

Smug pride tickled at the captain from the other side of the neural bridge. Of course Tony was impressive. That is the basic unit of genius, you know.

"Mr Stark?" Even though Dr Lightcap was calling Tony, Steve tilted his head toward her as well.

"You rang, Doctor?" Tony replied once he got his words back.

"How are you feeling?" Dr Lightcap asked, concerned.

The reply came after an errant, flirtatious grin in Steve's direction. "A little surprised, very much like rubbing this in Spangles's face over there."

A blush took over Steve's face even as he insisted that his previous worry was valid.

Mischievously, Tony sent a mental image to the soldier.

And Steve thought his face could get no more red. He managed somehow, when he realized that all the times he had pleasured himself to thoughts of Tony were on full display. The subject of all his fantasies, dirty and otherwise, was able to see them all. Steve wanted to crawl into a hole and light himself on fire.

A wave of heat from Tony took him by surprise. Oh. Oh!

Well that worry was all for nothing, Steve realized. He couldn't help the goofy grin that split his face even as Dr Lightcap asked if he was alright. "Yes, yes, just, uh, memories," he fibbed.

Teasing shock came his way. Captain America just told a lie!

A concept of Tony's lips getting zipped shut was sent back.

"I think we've found a pair," Dr Lightcap said with obvious delight and a look over the chairs at the other scientists.

"I don't think I've ever seen so strong of a mental link," one said, awe in her voice.

"Not even Romanoff and Barton," another added.

"You can shut it down safely though," Dr Lightcap requested.

There was an affirmative response. "Disconnection in five, four…"

Before it happened, Steve reached out and gave the mental equivalent of a touch to the face.

In response, he got what felt like a squeeze of his hand.

Being alone in his mind felt foreign. Steve reeled, overwhelmed by the cold loneliness after having such a bright presence with him.

There was a hint of shock, but it faded fast.

"Everything alright, boys?" Dr Lightcap asked, visually examining them as she noted things down on a clipboard.

Steve nodded. "Life feels a little fast now," he admitted. How he had gotten used to the speed of Tony's mind so quickly, he wasn't sure.

"Everything seems a little dimmer and fuzzier, but I'm getting used to it again," Tony agreed.

"Could you both explain?" Dr Lightcap requested.

Immediately Tony began talking. "It was like we were both perceiving things, but only the best data was being used and the rest was going in the recycle bin," he explained, "So it was mainly Dorito's senses being used, and his are superpowered, so using my own again make me feel like I'm wrapped up in cotton wool. I can assume that things feel fast to him because I process faster, so it's like a permanent adrenaline rush in terms of perception." Of course, he would turn it into a roundabout self compliment.

From the noises Dr Lightcap made as she jotted it all down, it made sense to her. "Alright, I think we're done with you in here," she told them with a bright smile, "You should go to medical, just in case we didn't catch something." She released them from the electronics and then went back to convene with the other scientists.

"Dorito?" Steve asked as he pushed himself to his feet. He had to steady himself on the chair, but the lightheadedness faded fast.

"Well yeah. You saw the internet memes back home, right?" Tony answered with an exhilarated laugh. He too reeled, getting used to having a body again, but recovered quickly.

Still nervous, Steve offered a hand. It was his first time showing affection for another man openly and still felt like a delicious risk.

With a big grin, Tony took it. His hand was cool and calloused and everything Steve ever hoped for.

They walked out the door like that, hand in hand.

The moment the remaining group saw them, there was a chorus of cheers. Concepcion launched herself at them with a squeal, while the rest patted backs. In a corner, Clint collected money from dejected classmates with a cackle.

"Betting on us, really?" Steve asked, more amused than irritated. That would probably come later. It was impossible to be anything other than elated right now.

"Of course," Clint called as he counted his winnings, "How could I pass up easy money?"

With a mischievous little smile Nat added, "Most of it was riding on who would get brain damaged. I think most of the money was on Steve because of your twisted mind, Tony." The gleam in her pale green eyes was teasing.

The men traded looks and Tony gave the lot of them an unimpressed sniff.

To get him to smile, Steve sang out, "I'm not that innocent."

It worked. They walked to the medical bay with Tony laughing himself to tears and left even Nat shell shocked behind them.

The tests were negative for brain damage and any other kind of injury beyond slight shock. "With how intense Dr Lightcap said your connection was, that's normal," the doctor assured them cheerfully, "I'm completely comfortable discharging you with perfect health." He signed their forms and sent them to the dorm to rest for the day.

Of course, Steve eventually got on the other Avengers' asses about placing bets on such a serious thing. Not so shocked, he included Tony in that berating after he found the man collecting a huge pile of cash.

The innocent smile he got in return was unconvincing. "But we need the money," Tony reasoned.

When he remembered their chat and near kiss on the road, Steve left it well enough alone. There were different ways of dealing with changes and Tony's seemed to be finding new ways of providing for 'his' people.

It made his chest flutter to be one of those.

After that, training only got tougher. Of those who started out, only Concepcion was left who the Avengers were very good friends with. When half the remaining class was cut after simulator failures, they closed ranks and became almost family. Even Bryan.

The training types were combined into a real battle simulation and somehow, some way, Steve and Tony conquered faster than ever before. With Steve's tactical mind and Tony's instinct for the unexpected, as well as Steve's enhanced senses and Tony's knowledge of physics, they made a formidable fighting force.

Nat and Clint had always seemed to share a brain, but when they were rigged up to the machine they were one in a way Steve hadn't previously thought possible. While in the sim, and later the jaeger, Tony jokingly called them Clintasha.

In return, Clint came up with the moniker 'Stony' and everyone else took it up faster than Steve or Tony could stop it.

It probably had to do with them being a team even before academy, Steve thought as they sat through a performance review near the end of the third semester. They were used to functioning as a unit and accounting for each other's strengths and weaknesses. The shock with which the higher ups reacted to their teamwork was immensely satisfying.

There were a few more cuts during the combined sim training, leaving only ten pilot pairs to finish the academy. That included Concepcion and Bryan; Clint and Natasha; and Steve and Tony.


	8. Out of Control

Thank you to **Kae Richa** who is basically my super fan. Seriously. Thanks for the reviews, including the one to the last chapter.

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 8: Out of Control**

" _My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."_

― _Alan Moore_

If Bruce knew today would be such trouble, he would have called in sick. It would have been a blatant lie, but no one would have called him on it. He would have gotten away with it.

SHIELD was demanding his time and expertise, which he was perfectly willing to give if it meant getting his friends back. The sorcerer who sent them… wherever, had died in the fight, so his knowledge of how to bring them back was lost. Only Bruce and the other scientists were left to figure it out and he wouldn't let the Avengers down if he could help it. So that wasn't the issue.

No, the issue was what happened when they did manage to make contact with wherever that portal sent them to. It was only a computer hack, streaming footage from a camera that hopefully was close enough to provide clues as to how the teleported Avengers were doing. The footage sent most of SHIELD into a riot.

The surroundings themselves were fairly well lit and very strange, a small rounded room made of metal with two pairs of treads comprising most of the floor. In those treads two men in white armor over skintight black suits stood, covered from head to toe, with a holographic disc attached to the left hand of the man on the left and the reverse true as well. They faced what looked like a huge window with a shared holographic screen in front of it that doubled as a touch screen; the shorter pilot pressed several buttons in succession on it. The setup was remarkably familiar.

"There's something creepy about this," Sam commented as he watched the footage in a SHIELD conference room. Fury and Hill were there as expected, Thor and Bruce as the remains of the Avengers, and the (hopefully) temporary replacements of the team members they searched for: War Machine, Falcon, Agent 13, and the Winter Soldier. They sat at a table and watched the video, looking for any sign of what was or wasn't happening to their friends.

When Bruce examined the men and their surroundings, he agreed. There was something ever so slightly unnatural about this. Maybe it was the way the scenery out the window changed, but familiarity tickled at him.

In the video, the voice that had previously been giving admiring platitudes changed. "Level three kaiju heading toward the Gulf of Alaska. We can't require this of you, but you're the closest defense we have. It'll take half an hour to scramble a jaeger and-" the man said, apologetic and grave at once.

"Kaiju?"

"Jaeger?"

"Kaiju is Japanese for 'strange beast'," Agent Carter volunteered.

Unexpectedly, Rhodey piped up. "Jaeger means 'hunter' in German." He frowned at the implication of the video: giant monster attacks.

"You say that like we're not in a jaeger!" It was a shock to hear Tony's voice issue from the smaller set of armor, cheerful and teasing as usual.

From the size and dimensions of the other man, it was Steve hooked in beside him.

"Red Sirius is a training jaeger," the voice reminded them, "You don't have the full compliment of weapons right now." He seemed chagrined.

"Hasn't stopped us before," Steve said grimly, confirming his presence.

Bruce let out an almost silent breath of relief. At least half of his missing friends were alright and the other half most likely were.

"Red Sirius, you are authorized to engage the kaiju codenamed Uruk," the voice pronounced with a tone that said he didn't think it was a good idea.

"Let's get this bitch," Tony said viciously.

Suddenly, Bruce knew what looked so wrong. "Their movements," he pointed out, watching his friends with awe and concern, "They're moving the exact same way. See how they're walking mostly with their hips? That's Tony's walk. And the way their shoulders move with their arms? Steve does that." He couldn't believe it took him this long to realize the inherent sameness and wrongness of it.

As they watched more closely, the others seemed just as disturbed as Bruce. Why were they suddenly synchronized, meeting in the middle, when usually they were worlds apart in every way?

Just as strangely, there was very little verbal communication except with the person giving them direction. Swearing and frustrated comments were the exception.

Then there was a roar from outside the room (was it a room?) that could even be heard through the video. The kaiju was close.

"Here we come!" Tony sang out.

Together, both men punched; despite their different styles it was the exact same motion from both.

Outside the window, a gunmetal grey fist lashed out.

"Mother of God," Bruce whispered. This couldn't be happening.

"Jaegers are Gundam suits!" Rhodey exclaimed. He sounded unable to decide whether he was horrified or delighted.

When Barnes looked puzzled at this reference (just like Steve would have been) and Thor demanded an explanation, Sam said with growing disbelief, "Giant mechanized suits built to fight. In shows they're usually controlled by the movements of the people in them or by their thoughts." He knew far too much about children's tv shows.

As they watched Steve and Tony fight what looked like Godzilla, Bruce had a strange thought… Now to see if he was correct.

While most of them were understandably absorbed into watching the fight itself, he looked at Tony and Steve's physical cues. They were completely in line with each other. The most disconcert he saw was when the captain shouted, "I'm gonna kill you, Tony!" right before a particularly risky maneuver: shoving an arm further down the kaiju's throat when it was bitten.

"What are they-" Agent Carter cut herself off when the arm fired a missile that made the kaiju's belly explode from within. "Effective," she commented blandly.

It was a typical Tony move, Bruce saw with a small smile. The expression fell when it proved his alarming conclusion.

"What is it?" Barnes asked in a gravelly voice, more observant than he was given credit for.

On the screen, the fight ended with the machine, Red Sirius, using a second missile to explode the kaiju's spinal cord through its open, shrieking mouth. From the exhilarated laughter and stammering congratulations, it was unexpected.

"I think Sam's right," Bruce said, drawing the attention of most of the room from Tony and Steve reporting the death and beginning the walk back to land.

"What do you mean?" Fury asked, looking from the video feed to the scientist.

It was difficult to contemplate while still; Bruce began pacing. "When he said that the machines are usually operated by the movements or thoughts of the pilots," he answered, "From the looks of it, the jaeger followed Tony and Steve's movements."

"And?" Fury prompted with a glare.

"I think they were mentally connected," Bruce confessed hesitantly. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be right.

There was some tension in the room, but it didn't seem like he was fully understood. "What's that look on your face for?" Rhodey asked cautiously.

When Bruce took inventory of his expression, he realized he was grimacing.

"Steve and I have stronger senses," said Barnes grimly, "We experience more colors, can hear pitches too high and low for most, because of our potential speed we perceive things faster. Among other things." He paused, licked his lips, before continuing, "I don't think an unenhanced human mind can take that."

There was silence as the thought was digested. It was horrifying: brain damage would result and eventual, agonizing death after it. As far as Bruce knew, there was no alternative. "If anyone can take that, it's Tony," he declared stubbornly.

Rhodey nodded his head in agreement, crossing his arms over his chest.

Though no one else looked convinced, they did not say anything. No, they went back to the video feed.

"Any chance we can change the channel?" Sam asked.

Thankfully with the flesh hand, Barnes hit the back of Falcon's head with a forbidding scowl.

"You know, that's actually a good idea," Fury answered.

* * *

When Steve and Tony got back to the academy, they were immediately swept up by friends and frenemies alike. Instructors were more distant but no less jubilant.

Even they couldn't quite believe it. The whole way back to Kodiak Island the men were in a daze, wondering if that had really happened. It was one thing to kill a kaiju in their normal way, using a shield and an Iron Man suit, but doing it in the same way as the rest of the world was strange and fascinating. It never struck Steve to think that he actually would, even while he was being trained to.

By the time they were suiting down, the shock had made way for goofy grins and nervous giggles; now they had settled into elated acceptance. This was amazing.

"Your first kaiju kill, and you're not even out of training! Damn! You're making the rest of us look like losers!" Bryan cheered, slapping them on the backs.

Steve and Tony shared a sly smile. Oh, it wasn't their first kill. But they weren't going to say that.

No, instead they enjoyed what was virtually a feast for dinner. It was the first real celebration they'd had in this universe and lasted for most of the night. There was food all over the place and drinks passed out, no one even trying to keep to the especially healthy diet that they had been on for the past months. What's a party without junk food?

The one thing missing was alcohol, but no one seemed to mind. No, there was class tomorrow and no one wanted to deal with a hangover.

Through the night, it became easier to figure out where Steve ended and Tony started. At first one would be asked a question and the other would answer, confusing everyone around them. Eventually it got figured out and they were kept together to minimize confusion.

Admittedly, it freaked out Natasha and Clint. "Is this what happens after every drift?" the latter asked warily.

As one, they shrugged. "Maybe it's just that we have too strong of a connection," Tony suggested.

"Generally, drift hangovers are mild and gone by dinner," Colonel Wright said out of nowhere, "Has me a little worried about the two of you." He sipped on a box of apple juice as he looked from one to the other and back again.

Tony's surprise washed over them both. Why would the Colonel be worried about them?

"Just because I'm an ass doesn't mean I don't care," Wright commented with a shrug before he moved on to chat with other instructors.

A niggle of amusement passed through Steve's mind and he gently elbowed Tony in the side. Of course he would find humor in this mess.

It was impossible to sleep that night. Steve tossed and turned, an empty feeling inside that he could only label 'Tony'. That was what was missing. Damn the bunkbeds, he thought irritably.

"Cap?" Of course, Tony was awake. When wasn't he?

"Yeah?" Steve whispered.

"I can't sleep," Tony complained.

"Me either," Steve admitted. He was about ready to sit up and say to hell with tomorrow when Tony swung down from the top bunk.

The genius sat down on the end of the bed like he belonged there, leaning against the bars that served as a low footboard. There wasn't enough light for even Steve to make out details, just general shapes. It still made his heart beat faster to know that the object of his affections was on his bed.

"Today was weird as hell," Tony said out of nowhere, "I hate how slow that jaeger is. With how much we depend on speed and maneuverability, we were lucky to not get taken out."

Steve grimaced as his thoughts from earlier were echoed. Several times in the fight they had forgotten that they were in a giant, lumbering robot and tried to dodge faster than it could follow. If all the jaegers were like that, he wasn't sure how long they would last.

When he thought about it, Clint and Nat were in the same boat. Maybe they were even the captain to his and Tony's cabin boy. Being regular, if skilled, people on a team where the rest had super strength (or a set of power armor with super strength), they had to rely on dodging more often than taking the hit. This would put a kink in that style for sure.

"I made some designs for a couple of jaegers. By the time we get out of here they'll be be in production since I've got Stark Industries back," Tony went on, "With my experience with the Iron Man armor, I might have a leg up on the speed versus strength thing." He sounded hopeful, a rare thing right now.

"If anyone can save our bacon, it's you," Steve told him certainly. He couldn't count how many times Tony had come up with just the right thing at the right time to keep the Avengers from getting squashed under the amount of supervillain attacks. Not for the first time, he was fiercely glad Tony was with him here.

"I certainly hope so," Tony said, tone arrogant despite the uncertain words. A yawn interrupted anything else he was going to say.

"C'mon, we need to sleep. You can deal with SI in the morning," Steve said. His own eyelids were getting heavy, a welcome relief from his tossing and turning.

Instead of getting back into his own bed, Tony simply curled up like a cat on the end of Steve's.

Steve had no problem with this. Except that he was sure Tony would have a crick in his neck when they were woken. "If you're going to sleep on my bed, at least get under the covers," he said, and lifted up the edge.

There was no argument, just Tony crawling up and under the blankets. He ran nice and warm, a side effect from the arc reactor, compared to the cold leftover from the ice. They both sighed in relief. Tony curled up in front of Steve, both of them barely fitting on the narrow bunk.

Steve was about to fall asleep when the back pressed against his chest vibrated with muffled laughter. "What?" he grumbled into Tony's hair. He liked the smells of blueberries, coconut, and metal.

"I got you in bed before the first date," Tony said with a smirk in his voice.

"Shut up," Steve replied, already half asleep.

"Love you," Tony mumbled, but they were both too far asleep to know.

* * *

Graduation was on a sunny June day that year. Considering that Steve hadn't even gotten to attend his own high school graduation (he was in bed with bronchitis, again) it was a new experience.

He was sure that there were usually no news cameras at most of them. This particular event had a whole section for the press. Otherwise the cafeteria, which doubled as the auditorium, was about half full. If most of the people in attendance were bigwigs from the military, no one said anything.

What was mentioned was how much Tony hated the uniform. For once in their lives he and Bryan agreed on something, shifting uncomfortably and tugging on ties and sleeves. If he didn't know about Clint's military background, Steve would be surprised that the archer wasn't also complaining.

No, Clint and Nat were a strange combination of dangerous and dignified in their dress greens. As of today they were Army Rangers and they looked the part. Even if they were definitely carrying more weapons than was regulation, in places that strangers would never think to look.

As for Steve, he was shifting around uncomfortably for a whole different reason. Public speaking was never his thing.

"Today we send out a whole new class of pilots to defend us against the kaiju. Congratulations class of 2019," Marshal Pentecost said, ending his speech to raucous applause, "If you would each come up when your name is called, you'll be given the badges that officially mark you as pilots."

All ten of them sat up a little straighter. Who would be first?

"Concepcion Damascus and Bryan La Fontaine," Marshal Pentecost called. It seemed that he was going by pilot pairs.

The two shuffled out to thunderous applause. From the back, someone shouted in Spanish and Concepcion called back with laughter in her voice.

Each had their hand shaken and a pin put on their lapels before they left the stage. Cameras flashed, nearly blinding, the whole time.

One by one the pairs were called, until it was only Avengers left. "Clinton Barton and Natasha Romanoff," Marshal Pentecost said with a little twitch of his lips. Was that almost a smile? There was something knowing in his face as he shook each of their hands all the same.

"Woo, Clintasha!" Tony whooped obnoxiously.

The eyebrow that rose on Nat's face was almost terrifying. As he followed his partner down the stairs on the other side of the stage, Clint's subtly raised middle finger was less so.

Steve rolled his eyes and shifted in preparation to get up. It was only them left.

"This next pair are already highly accomplished. This past April they killed the Category 3 kaiju Uruk in the training jaeger Red Sirius," Marshal Pentecost announced, to impressed whispers and even more camera flashes, "I present to you Steven Rogers and Anthony Stark."

If there was interest before, there was an uproar now. Everyone knew that Tony Stark died in 2011 in this universe. Now here he was, bouncing up the stairs, a few years older and in an army dress uniform.

More slowly Steve followed, amused at the shark-like grin Tony had on for the cameras. They were flashing so fast that there may as well have been a spotlight on his face. Just like any other day back home.

When it was his turn, Steve smiled slightly down at the Marshal as a pin was put on the familiar olive drab. There was something meaningful in the British man's face as he tapped that Ranger badge. A reminder as to what waking up that morning, lungs clearing up instead of drowning in kaiju blue, meant.

Solemnly, Steve nodded. It was a responsibility he was fully willing to take on, even without Tony's deal.

"If Rangers Romanoff and Barton would come back up on stage, I have an additional badge to pin on them, Ranger Stark, and Ranger Rogers," Marshal Pentecost said, to mass confusion.

Even Steve and Tony were confused. From what he could see of his friends' reactions, they knew little more.

Once all the Avengers were on stage, lined up in a row, Marshal Pentecost said, "I think we've all watched the footage from last year of four talented individuals taking on a kaiju, without a jaeger, and winning. Today, I am honored to present each of them the kaiju combat badge and a medal to commemorate their bravery on that extraordinary day."

The applause this time started off slowly, but grew to epic proportions until the whole room echoed as the badges, then medals, were pinned. An additional handshake was given each of them as they departed the stage, aside of Steve. No, he stayed right where he was.

"Ranger Rogers is going to speak for a few moments, now," Marshal Pentecost announced before he stepped off stage.

Politely Steve waited until the Marshal was seated before he began. "This is a celebration of us, but it's not just our day. It's everyone's. We may have accomplished this, but the world is the real beneficiary. It has twenty new Rangers dedicated to protecting it with everything that we have; in war as in peace, in living as in dying, from this hour hence forth, until the Rangers release us or the apocalypse take us," he said, knowing full well that Clint had replaced most of his planned speech with lines from Lord of the Rings and ad libbing it, "We're being sent out into the real world now and it's time to follow the motto of our new brothers and sisters in arms: Rangers lead the way." He opened his mouth to thank everyone for their time, but was cut off by a projector flashing.

Instead of what he feared ("Who's strong and brave, here to save the American way?") there was an instrumental piece. It would have fit right along with Star Spangled Man with a Plan, harkening back to the days of the Howling Commandos, but there was something intense about it. Steve could fully envision a battle raging, Allies versus Axis, on the screen.

That was close enough, Steve thought with a conceding nod of his head as he watched himself and the other Avengers take on their first kaiju. The footage was shaky but good quality and shot from above. It had probably been hijacked from a news chopper. Even he winced when he saw himself covered in kaiju blue at the end, that had been a close call.

"If you'll excuse me, I'm going to cut my speech short and murder my classmates," Steve announced the moment the music stopped.

Their row emptied quicker than he expected, even of Nat. Yep, they were all going to get it.

Less annoyed than he acted, Steve left the stage to another roaring round of applause. Just before he walked out the doors, he caught Marshal Pentecost saying, "Our graduates are a mischievous bunch, and as they're all absent, I suppose that the ceremony is done with. Thank you for coming."

The party took place in their dorm room, a spread of nicked food on two of the empty bunks and drinks scattered on the shelves. There was music courtesy of Tony hacking the tannoy system again, and the twenty of them danced and chattered and laughed their way through the night.

Phone numbers and email addresses were exchanged with the hopes of keeping in touch. Even Bryan had become family, that rude cousin you make excuses for but secretly are amused by. They all knew that it would take a while to get into jaegers, if they managed it at all with production slowing down.

The only place that had sped up on jaeger production was America, because Tony had gotten Stark Industries to put together two. One for him and Steve, one for Nat and Clint. The designs were put forward months ago and now that training was over, Tony was almost back to routine- spending days at a time in a workshop with minimal breaks, until one of the other Avengers coaxed or threatened him away from the computer.

This time, there were only as many interruptions as was needed to keep Tony alive and at least moderately healthy. As much as Steve hated it, his boyfriend's mind was needed now more than ever. The world was in too much danger for him to do anything more than watch lines of code be written almost faster than he could read them, creating a new AI to help control the jaegers.

The newly graduated class was split up among the shatterdomes. Concepcion and Bryan were sent to Sydney, Nat and Clint to Nagasaki. The other pairs were shipped off to the other locations. Just in case backup pilots were needed. Only Tony and Steve stayed in Alaska, given equipment and room to experiment with weapons and systems for new jaegers.

While Tony feverishly wrote code or designed blueprints, Steve would train in the weight room or run along the coast. Sometimes he sat in a corner and sketched the incoming students. Maybe the last class, it was whispered.

There was very little of the fun that his own class had found. No, there was a grim desperation that didn't belong on their young faces. They all knew something was coming, something bad.

Some were a little younger than others, Steve saw when he looked in on the first day. The youngest announced in a rough Australian accent that he was born August 13, 2003. That made him not quite sixteen years old.

It was like a punch to the gut to see a kid in there. That room, this base, is for _soldiers_ and Steve has never wanted to see one so young. Clint would shrug with a sympathetic smile and a comment about saving the world, Nat would say that she had been younger when she started and fighting for a far worse cause.

That didn't stop Steve from finding out about the kid the first chance he got. It wasn't that hard. He was the biggest topic of conversation around, besides Steve and Tony and jaeger news.

The kid was Chuck Hansen, son of one of Lucky Seven's pilots and nephew to the other. Raised in the cockpit and more a soldier than a boy even before he got here. One look in his hard, angry blue eyes at dinner on week three and Steve came close to agreeing.

They generally didn't run into each other. Chuck was too busy being a student, Steve looking after his boyfriend and testing anything the dev team thought of. Sometimes he would be asked to demonstrate a combat move or help haul a heavy object- somehow one of the candidates got trapped between a wardrobe and a wall at one point.

In the fall, they finally ran into each other for more than five minutes. Steve had gone to the roof to get away from the madhouse of the labs. He didn't ask why Chuck was there, just sat down two feet away on the cold concrete.

For a while there was silence. It was nice, being alone together with someone. He hadn't gotten the chance since before the Stark jaegers were put into production.

There was enough light to draw by and Steve took the opportunity. The facility was quiet and still, the perfect time to depict it in lead and charcoal. He tried to not hum to himself as he set pencil to paper and only figured out he failed when Chuck spoke.

"Was that really you in that film?" the boy asked.

It took a moment for Steve to figure out what he was talking about. Then he realized he was humming Star Spangled Man with a Plan and felt his ears go hot. "Yes," he admitted sheepishly.

"Nice work with the wires on that motorcycle. Looked like you were really holding it up," Chuck said.

"I was," Steve corrected him. He remembered the first time he did the stunt, having to figure out the balance between the motorcycle and the three girls on it. That was scarier by far than his unauthorized rescue mission, way back when things were simple.

Chuck was forgiven for snorting out his disbelief. "Pull the other one," he said.

"I can show you," Steve offered. It would feel good to use his strength to its fullest extent again.

Obviously Chuck was humoring him when he agreed.

They climbed off the room and down to the lab, Steve sighing when he found his boyfriend going nuts over a system that had apparently been installed completely backward. How they managed that was beyond him.

It wasn't until Tony noticed their arrival that he paused in his rant long enough to breathe. "Oh, hey guys. What's up?" he asked like he wasn't so tired he was shivering and didn't have coffee stains down his front.

"Anything you need help with in here?" asked Steve, "Within my skill set?" There was more in here that he couldn't do than that he could.

"Yeah, actually. A couple of components came out wrong, I need you to bend them into shape and then hold a panel in place so it can be installed. Got it?" Tony said, tripping over his rushed and slurred words.

"Then you come to bed," Steve said sternly.

As always, it was waved off. "Sleep is for the weak-" Tony began.

"And the dead," Steve finished with a roll of his eyes. After years of living with Tony, he knew the phrase well enough. It could have been the Army's motto back when he served, now that he thought of it.

The pieces that were put in front of him were metal, as thick as his forearm, and about three feet long. "Which way?" Steve asked, not reacting when he noticed Chuck moving in closer.

In response, Tony made a gesture that meant for it to be bent in a perfect right angle. He then tapped the section of the bar that the crease needed to be at.

With a nod, Steve put his hands where he needed them to make the line smooth. It took effort, but was well within his ability.

Beside him, Chuck tried and couldn't find any give in the metal. Not for someone with normal human strength, at least.

Steve hid his smile when he bent a second, then a third bar. Soon after, he had his hand out for the bar Chuck held.

With a glare at the metal, the boy dropped it into his hand.

It seemed that Chuck became a believer after he saw Steve bend that same metal bar. The look on his face said it all. "Okay," he muttered, "Okay, then."

The sheet of metal that needed holding up was even less of an issue. It was the size of a small boat, but there were holes that apparently huge screws would go through near the middle. Steve used those to haul it to where it was needed, and then pressed upward while the technicians fastened it in place at the edges.

When he looked, Tony was leering in a way that ordinarily might have meant something fantastic later on. As it was, he swayed in place and had to catch himself on a desk.

By the time the technicians were done, Tony and Chuck were both falling asleep on the table. Even they needed rest, no matter what they claimed.

As he probably wouldn't appreciate being carried off, Steve shook Chuck's shoulder. "Hey, you should get to bed. Class starts early," he said.

The only answer was a grumble as the boy got to his feet. He shuffled out of the room without a word.

Amused, Steve picked up his exhausted boyfriend and exited the lab. The world was at war, but sleep had to come sometime.


	9. Bonnie and Clyde

Many thanks to **Kae Richa** and **robert32514** for your feedback! This is admittedly filler for the most part, but I hope it doesn't disappoint anyways.

 **Edit** : Somehow I missed my original author's not when I copied and posted this to the site. Anyway, here it is:

This chapter is dedicated to the victims of the Orlando mass shooting. One man's hatred may have taken their lives, but he can never erase them from our hearts and memories. Love will always overcome.

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 9: Bonnie and Clyde**

" _You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."_

― _Mae West_

On November 2, the first of the Mark V's came out: Striker Eureka. It was just in time for Scott Hansen to be kicked out of the PPDC in an incident that would surely become legend, if only because no one knew exactly what happened. At the same time, Chuck Hansen graduated the Jaeger Academy and was sent off to Sydney to copilot with his father.

Half a month after Striker Eureka, Stark Industries finished with their first jaeger. There was a christening ceremony, with the Becket brothers shattering a champagne bottle on the left foot on the gigantic machine. Who better to introduce a new jaeger than two successful pilots?

When he heard the name of the machine, Steve grinned. What better than Widowmaker for two assassins?

There were some disgruntled mutterings about standard naming procedure, but Tony shut those down quickly. "I build it, I name it," he said pointedly.

Not another peep was heard.

The crowd watched with interest as the pilots dropped what looked like briefcases on the ground in front of them. They were both black and gold, but Clint's had purple accents to Nat's red. Each stepped forward without pause, fully confident in Tony's engineering, and were rewarded with metal plates crawling up their bodies and fitting together seamlessly.

Surprised, Steve glanced over and down at his boyfriend. "Are those…?" he trailed off.

Tony grinned proudly as the modified Iron Man suits finished assembling themselves. "No weapons, but I kept the flight capabilities and they have complete life support systems integrated, all powered by miniature arc reactors," he said. Sharp brown eyes watched for problems as Nat and Clint activated the thrusters, amazing their audience as they flew up to land on their jaeger's head.

The assassins disappeared into the conn pod and from there, everyone turned their attention to the screen showing what the inside cameras saw. Nat was settling into the right side treads and Clint the left.

Steve carefully studied the harnesses that attached themselves to the armor, storing it away. This was probably something like what was cooked up for him and Tony.

"Initiating pilot to pilot protocol," announced a voice inside the conn pod. It sounded like… But that was impossible.

"Is that Bruce's voice?" Steve asked pointedly. It was more than a little exciting, but made him long for home like nothing else so far.

The grin on Tony's face even as he watched his friends react, was smug. "I installed a learning AI like JARVIS and gave it video clips of Bruce," he answered, "It figured out the voice pretty fast." He was either the most brilliant man alive or the stupidest. It all depended on whether the assassins tried killing him for his little surprise later.

"Anything I should know about the AI in ours?" Steve questioned. If it sounded like Thor, or (dear God) Fury, he was going to have _words_ with his boyfriend.

"It's just JARVIS," Tony said with a shrug.

Relieved, Steve turned his attention back to the jaeger tests. Of course. It was _just_ the most advanced AI to ever exist, in this universe or their own.

"I apologize for startling you, Sir and Miss," said the AI in a voice that almost sounded apologetic, to the amazement of everyone who heard, "I am the AI that Tony Stark designed for your use in the Widowmaker. He called me BRUCE, after the man whose voice I was trained to simulate."

Awkwardly, Clint cleared his throat. "No problems, buddy. Let's get going," he said in a metallized voice, and steadied himself in preparation.

Wordlessly, Nat adjusted into a more stable position.

"Commencing pilot to pilot protocol," announced BRUCE.

This time there was no flinch, just the nod of a purple helmet. Then the Drift initiated, only noticeable in the way that both pilots went completely still. It seemed to last forever.

On the ground, Tony shifted nervously.

Steve put a hand on his boyfriend's lower back to try to comfort him. It seemed that the only one who didn't have faith in Tony's ability to do this right was the man himself.

"Pilots calibrating," BRUCE announced mildly.

Then Nat and Clint raised the right arm in a punch.

The Widowmaker followed seamlessly.

Scientists, military leaders, students, jaeger pilots, and the press all cheered. They did it. Another jaeger was functional, at least so far.

"Hey, what's this button?" Clint asked, pointing at something on the holographic screen ahead of him.

"That activates the pulse gauntlets, sir," answered BRUCE politely.

"None of this 'sir' stuff, it's creepy in Bruce's voice," Clint reprimanded and focused his attention on another button.

"Call me Nat and him Clint," Nat instructed, voice similarly metallized, before slapping Clint's hand away from a switch on a pedestal between them.

"I will endeavor to do so in the future. For now, I believe that an explanation on operating the Widowmaker is necessary," BRUCE said. For an AI, he already had a good understanding of what was going on.

Long story short, there were several weapons available to them depending on the situation. They all were tested at least once, including the pulse gauntlets, each of the two plasma cannons ("Based on Gipsy Danger's. They seem particularly effective," Tony explained, to the Beckets' obvious pride), abdominal rocket launchers, and a unibeam. The last one was an obvious holdover from the Iron Man suit, venting the excess power generated by the arc reactor to create what may as well be a laser capable of cutting straight through nearly anything.

"You can use the buttons and switches to activate each of the weapons, or issue a command to me to do so," BRUCE went on after he had given them the rundown, "Other features include 180 degree range of motion on each of the major joints, back jets, boot thrusters, and a top access escape hatch. Your drive suits are equipped with full life support systems and flight capabilities, and I am installed in their software. If you ever are in a situation that requires it, I am fully capable of ejecting you myself. Do you have any questions?" It was an impressive array of features, with a formidable intelligence in both pilots and programming.

"How do we know you're not going to go SkyNet on us?" Clint asked.

Now that Steve had watched the Terminator movies, he got the reference. If anyone but Tony had made BRUCE, he would be worried too.

"My parameters are specifically set to keep that from happening," BRUCE assured the pilots, "In addition, my brother AI has been very adamant that I learn what not to do in order to keep my pilots in peak condition." It must have meant JARVIS.

"Tony made you. That's good enough for me," Nat said, and as far as the assassins were concerned, that was that.

It really was, Steve thought as he watched the tests through to the end. As expected, there were no outright malfunctions in the equipment. A few flaws presented themselves in the rather light armor, but that was the tradeoff for speed and flexibility that put Striker Eureka to shame and kept to the assassins' fighting style. The plasma cannons were slow to load, making Tony mutter discontentedly, but that was the stuff of upgrades.

When the tests were over, the Widowmaker was given a hearty stamp of approval by the higher ups.

Of course, that meant that Tony was besieged by the military trying to get him to design more jaegers and weapons. Before he could tell them all to go fuck themselves, Steve dragged him away to meet up with the newly unhooked Nat and Clint.

They took off their helmets, revealing slightly dazed faces and messy hair. "You coulda given a guy a warning about the AI voice," Nat said. Words that usually would have come from Clint's mouth sounded strange coming from hers.

"I thought you of all people would like it," Tony pouted.

"A warning would have been great," Clint repeated, unamused.

"What happened to the Bruce in this universe, anyway?" Steve asked. Somehow he hadn't thought about the other Avengers' copies, or their associates.

Tony's smile was tight as he answered. "Pretty much everybody's dead here," he answered, "A lab experiment killed Bruce instead of turning him into Big Green, nobody's heard from Asgard since the Vikings, and most everybody else we know except Sam died in the first few kaiju attacks." It was expected, but sad none the less.

Then Steve thought about what killed their own alternate selves- and froze. "Bucky," he said hoarsely.

Nat made a questioning noise, but Tony got the memo immediately. "Oh shit," the genius swore, eyes wide, "We need to get the other Nat's file. Pronto pup."

There was no time that day, everyone too busy expatriating the Widowmaker and his pilots to Nagasaki. A copy of Nat's file was smuggled into the conn pod with her, but there was no time to look for clues together. Not that it was needed.

When Steve looked at the original, his stomach twisted. It was the same incident report that had been thrown onto the internet back in their home universe. The only difference was that this Nat didn't live to tell the tale.

"Shot the tire out and then got the engineer straight through Nat. Soviet slugs, no rifling," Tony read off with dark eyes, "It looks like Zola liked to play god no matter what universe he was in." He snapped the folder shut in favor of the internet.

"What are you looking at?" Steve asked from behind the rest of the file. He was trying to determine the differences, what gave their Nat a chance at life but not this one. In this universe, the paramedics had been at a dumpling stand inside the city instead of heading to the outskirts for fried chicken. That meant that instead of being within a mile of the incident, they were a good five miles away here.

"To plot out a pattern, we need more than one data point," Tony answered mysteriously as he clicked a few times.

When Steve saw the picture of Howard Stark, he knew exactly what was going on. Instead of asking, he got up to look over his boyfriend's shoulder.

In this universe Howard died the same way he did back home: an auto accident on the way back from a charity gala when Tony was seventeen. "The pictures all look the same as ours," the genius reported stoically.

Steve swallowed harshly as he looked at the remains of the vehicle that his friend died in. It was nothing more than a twisted heap of smoldering metal. Had the crash gotten Howard, or had he slowly suffocated on the smoke?

"We need another data point to finalize it," Tony said quietly.

"President Kennedy," Steve put in.

This time, he was the one given a blank look. "JFK, really?" Tony asked, as if he couldn't believe his ears.

"Zola showed some pictures when he was stalling. One was of President Kennedy's assassination," Steve said with a grimace. After all this time, it was still hard to believe his friend had done those things. He never blamed Bucky for any of it, HYDRA was responsible in his point of view, but that didn't change who had been used to those ends.

"Was it just JFK or Robert too?" Tony asked.

"Not sure," Steve admitted. He leaned forward interestedly as his boyfriend put in both names, just in case.

Both came up as Soviet slugs, no rifling, fired from an extreme distance by an expert marksman that no one got a single glimpse of. The hallmarks of the Winter Soldier.

Grimly, Steve looked at the photos from both crime scenes. "It's him," he confirmed.

"But if the super soldier program never existed here, then why? How would Zola even get the idea to try the experiments that would do this?" Tony questioned as he put in a search for the phrase 'Winter Soldier'.

It took a few minutes of looking at conspiracy websites (that varied in the author's sanity) for Steve to come up with a decent answer. "There were all sorts of medical experiments going on at the time," he said, residual horror washing over him as he recalled all the times he had come across them and so often been unable to save the poor people, "The Germans had Mengele, the Japanese had Unit 451. I suppose that in this universe the Germans also had Zola." It wasn't that hard of a stretch to think that the mad doctor had the idea himself.

Tony looked disgusted. "It looks like we've got another Winter Soldier to save," he said, and wiped the search history.

The idea was less than appealing. They had gotten lucky last time, in a way. According to Bucky, the programming had been wearing off by the time of their fight on the helicarrier. His instinctive knowledge that this was _Steve_ and important to him had saved them both from a sticky ending.

What would happen when this Winter Soldier didn't have memories of a big, Dorito shaped Stevie to help him connect back to the world? It was a question for later.

And to be delegated. It was a good thing Clint and Nat were already assigned on that side of the world, Steve thought as Tony fired off a message to BRUCE. At least for now, that was the most secure way of getting information between the pilot pairs- one AI to another.

For now, it was bedtime. One more jaeger was there to protect the world. At least tonight, they could sleep a little more soundly.

* * *

In December, SI's other jaeger was completed. The amazingly fast pace of the production was explained by Tony as an assembly line process: when the equipment was done with one part of a jaeger, it went to that same part on the other. Only a more experimental armory had delayed this one for the past three weeks.

"I designed it to bridge the gap between our fighting styles," Tony explained as they watched the Beckets again christen a jaeger. This one was Iron Patriot, both a compromise between their Avengers titles and homage to a friend left behind in the other universe. In looks it fit the bill, a red and blue monster with a gold visor, and a pinup style decal on the left pectoral of an Ironette holding the shield.

Steve made a noise of interest as he clutched the briefcase that would fold out into his drive suit. It was a little nerve wracking, no matter that he trusted Tony's ability with technology. He hadn't flown anything more than twenty feet since crashing the Valkyrie in 1945.

"For you there's punching power with the roll of nickels and stun spike fists," Tony continued, not acknowledging his boyfriend's anxiety, "For me, I put in scaled up repulsors. Of course there's the unibeam and some shoulder missiles, and we both like to wrestle our opponents, so I put in some extra strength-" He was cut off when Steve dropped his briefcase on the ground. It was time.

The moment he stepped onto the treads, Steve started getting encased in armor. To be honest, it was kind of terrifying. No matter how used to the modern world(s) he thought he had gotten, there was always something to make him feel old fashioned. And voluntarily helpless, in this case.

There was no darkness inside the helmet. Instead images of everything around him were projected, along with stats and gauges. How Tony kept track of everything…

"Hello, Captain Rogers. May I be of assistance?" JARVIS's wonderfully familiar voice said.

Steve had practiced with the drive suit before. He knew how to operate it, how to use the repulsors and maintain a steady flight. That didn't stop the uncertainty as he ascended to the top of Patriot's head to enter the conn pod.

In the right side spot, Steve's skin crawled when the harness attached itself. It was still a little too modern for his tastes. But that was this world.

"Initiating pilot to pilot protocol in five, four..." JARVIS announced.

Steve grinned as he glanced to his left. Tony's drive suit looked exactly like one of the Iron Man suits. Maybe it was one. "Ready to be traumatized?" he teased.

"Depends on if you slept with my dad," Tony returned. There was a beat of awkward silence before he asked, "Wait, that's actually a legitimate question." Of course, he would wonder about something like that.

"You're about to find out," Steve answered. He hadn't. Sure, he'd thought about kissing the man, and they flirted more than was safe at the time, but nothing had come of it. Now he thanked everything holy.

"Connection initiated," JARVIS said placidly.

Memories flashed by. Being beaten up in an alley and making a circuit board, the agony of Project Rebirth and the installation of the arc reactor, being frozen alive and dying cold and alone in space, they all blended together in a soundless blur of blue. By now they knew each other's most important memories just as well as their own and the emotions that the thoughts conjured in each other were just as familiar. Only the minor memories changed, some more prominent than others. Finally it was done, they were back in their own bodies.

Except not. They weren't Steve and Tony anymore, they were SteveandTony, or Stony, or some other weird and stupid portmanteau name that described them as one being. What one thought, the other knew not even a second later.

"Your neural handshake is astoundingly strong, sirs. Shall we begin testing mode?" asked JARVIS.

"Don't make me wait another minute, baby," Tony said with a grin. There was a relieved feeling in their chests, one that was nothing short of _home._ Despite being in a whole different universe, this was exactly where they belonged.

The tests went splendidly in Steve's opinion. Everything did exactly as described, and while he felt let down by the lack of 180 degree mobility, other advantages made up for it. The armor was better than on the Widowmaker, in a tradeoff for speed about equal to Striker Eureka. There were spikes on the knees (capable of cauterizing any wounds they caused to keep kaiju blue from getting everywhere) due to Steve's habit of using his whole body as a weapon. And then there was what JARVIS pointed out as, "a perfectly serviceable emergency weapon," in the form of coolant vents strategically placed for maximum impact.

Of course, Tony found fault in everything and mentally noted all of it down for later improvements. It almost made Steve's head spin with the speed.

When they took their first steps into the water, Steve knew and Tony agreed: the speech at graduation was more than just one of Clint's pranks now. They were in it until the end. In living and in dying, until the Rangers release them or the apocalypse take them.


	10. Grendel

Thank you so very much to the reviewers, **Naemir** and **Kae Richa**! You're both amazing!

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 10: Grendel**

" _The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."  
_ ― _Mark Twain_

Steve and Tony's first fight came not even a month after Iron Patriot's launch. Most of the bugs that Tony had spotted were corrected by then, thankfully, since they were generally in the code. JARVIS was still learning everything that could be done and adjusted in the jaeger, as were the pilots. There were bound to be some errors.

The call to arms came at two in the morning, in the form of JARVIS urging them awake with flashing lights and a call of, "Sir, Captain, there is movement in the Breech. Your superiors have sent orders for you to enter your jaeger now."

Those were the magic words; Steve was out of bed within seconds. He brushed his teeth and used the bathroom quickly, nerves crowding his stomach as he realized that this was their first official mission.

Through the door, he could hear Tony calling for coffee and more information.

"From the size of the opening, the kaiju is a Category Four, codenamed Grendel as of a few seconds ago," JARVIS said over the drip of the coffee maker, "According to the mission parameters I have gained access to, the command structure has decided on a three team drop consisting of yourselves, Gipsy Danger of Anchorage, and Lucky Seven of Sydney. The most probable location of the drop is Manila."

"We're going to have to walk to fucking Manila?" Tony complained as he pulled on pants.

"There appear to be helicopters attaching lines to Iron Patriot," JARVIS answered condescendingly.

There was a knock on the door of their room. "Time to get moving Stark, Rogers," a guy called through the door.

"Yeah, yeah," Tony grumbled as he dressed the rest of the way.

Steve steered his boyfriend out of the way of the dressers. It had been a relief to poke around their new room on the first day in Los Angeles and find the closest thing to his Captain America suit Tony could come up with in this universe. For that, Tony was given some very enthusiastic time in bed.

Even as he pulled on the familiar suit, Steve grinned dopily. At first he hadn't been sure about having sex, between them still figuring out their relationship and the constant change around them. But what they had now was well worth the risk.

"Get your fine ass in gear, Cap," Tony called from the bathroom door.

In response Steve buckled on the last of his chest armor and raised an eyebrow. It doesn't take him _that_ long to suit up.

"What, we're in a hurry," Tony said with a shrug.

Both grabbed the briefcases that turned into their drivesuits and walked out the door.

The halls of the LA Shatterdome were just like every other that they had seen so far: plain concrete all around, in a twisting labyrinth of offices, labs, and other designated spaces. That made it comforting in its familiarity as workers scurried around the pilots trying to do their jobs.

With no need to screw the complex armor on, the room adjacent to Iron Patriot's conn pod was empty. There Steve allowed his drive suit to unfold around him. After days of practice and training, he stood calmly as the metal climbed up his body.

A quick glance in the mirror when he was completely encased showed nothing out of place. The paint job echoed his Captain America suit as much as possible in the design, right down to the corset-like effect around the torso and capital A on the forehead. The star that normally was on his chest was replaced by the arc reactor powering the suit.

It was odd making the motions of walking but not being the one to actually move himself. The armor was too heavy to be moved from the inside, by normal people at least, using muscle strength only. Really, it was walking him to the conn pod.

Beside him, Tony had no compunctions about it. After so many years of being Iron Man he was used to it. "Ready for our big debut?" he asked cheerfully as they entered the cockpit.

Steve carefully lined his feet up with the treads on the floor and stood still as the harness attached itself. "I think so," he answered. Saving the world, that was his thing. What came after, not so much.

"Good morning sir, Captain," JARVIS said placidly, "Marshal Vilaro is calling." The icon on the screen of a ringing phone was strangely funny, considering the situation.

"Put her through," Steve said.

"Your assignment is the Category Four kaiju code named Grendel, en route to Manila," the familiar, heavy accent told them sternly, "Lucky Seven will most likely arrive first. You are to give them any support needed until Gipsy Danger can get to the scene and assist in finishing it off. Do not take risks, do not put yourselves in more danger than necessary. Are we clear?" If nothing else, she was incredibly concise.

"Yes ma'am," Steve acknowledged.

"Sure thing," Tony said. They both knew that he would come up with any and every way to circumvent that in order to get this done and over with faster.

"Engage pilot to pilot protocol," Marshal Vilaro announced.

Steve turned his head to look at his copilot. It would be a while before they really acknowledged themselves as separate beings again. One of the downsides to having such a strong neural connection, he supposed.

"Engaging pilot to pilot protocol," JARVIS echoed, "In 5, 4, 3…" The countdown was more nerve wracking than the actual thing. Only JARVIS's familiar voice made a difference.

"Ready, Tony?" Steve couldn't help asking.

"Getting cold feet, Capsicle?" Tony teased in return.

The snort left Steve right before JARVIS announced, "System initiated."

Familiar blue enveloped Steve's mind. He welcomed the rush of memories, both his and Tony's. Slowly they were being desensitized to the more painful memories each of them had, from Sarah Rogers's death to the Battle of SHIELD. It was a welcome change of pace.

As always their minds caressed and comforted through those memories, holding tightly to each other. If the portal had closed half a second earlier, if Howard had been quicker to shut down the reactor… Fear snaked through them at how many times they had come so close to losing each other. Sometimes before Tony was even born. On top of it love flowed, deep and strong and addicting.

Finally they surfaced from the rush of memories, confidence and determination surging through them both. "Neural link is stable and stronger than ever, sirs," JARVIS reported.

"Left hemisphere calibrating," Tony reported, flexing his fingers and wrists as he raised his right arm.

"Right hemisphere calibrating," Steve echoed. He too raised his right arm and together they made a crisp salute. Amusement radiated from Tony that he was saluting anyone without sarcasm.

A mental prod teased Tony.

"The kaiju is still en route to Manila. Lucky Seven and Gipsy Danger are on their way. Don't do anything stupid," the Marshal instructed.

"No problemo," Tony replied casually.

"Yes ma'am," Steve agreed more respectfully.

They both knew that if the opportunity came to finish it on their own, they would take it. But they silently agreed to not say so. That would get them pulled back faster than Clint could shoot them.

The helicopter harnesses jerked them upward and suddenly they were being airlifted. It would take a few hours to get over the Pacific. They had some time to cool their heels and get used to being connected again.

Concepts went from one man to the other as fast as they could be thought. Steve showed Tony thoughts translated into Gaelic, Yiddish, German, and French. Unwillingly impressed, Tony replied in schematics and numbers, ASL and Italian. In the little bit of downtime they had while testing and refining the drift and equipment, they were teaching and learning.

Time passed quickly, caught up in their own combined mind. It felt like minutes before JARVIS caught their attention. "Sirs, you may wish to turn your attention outward now," the AI warned them.

It was a scarce few seconds between then and hearing the roars of a kaiju. The thing was already landed and wrecking everything it could see. A mental image crossed from Steve to Tony about how much this thing looked like the cave troll from the first Lord of the Rings movie that made them both giggle.

 _Let's hope it doesn't do us like Frodo._ The sentiment was fiercely agreed upon. With the way the drive suits and circuitry within were designed, that might hurt.

"Transport disengaging," JARVIS reported.

"Good luck, Iron Patriot," said someone from the helicopter crew.

"Where we're going, we won't need luck," Tony replied. His smirk could be felt.

"Thanks," Steve said, mentally scolding Tony for his arrogance.

A hint of annoyance came back, with an apology for annoying Steve. The apology was accepted. It all happened in less than a second.

The Jaeger hit the ground with an audible rumble. Instinctively its pilots crouched to absorb the shock.

It got the kaiju's attention. The thing let out a roar, much like that same cave troll, and bounded toward them.

The mecha copied Steve and Tony's movements as they stood up to their full height. Instead of bracing for impact they sidestepped, smashing the back of its head into the ground as it barreled past. The delay between the pilots' movements and the machine's were beautifully minimal.

Even as they stomped on the kaiju's head, they felt immense pride in Tony's engineering. With a thought they activated the left boot thrusters. "How's that for a curb stomp!" Tony taunted as it roared under them.

The kaiju went to get its body under it and throw them off, but they danced away. While it was still on the ground Steve activated the repulsors and fired several seconds' worth of energy into the kaiju's thick skin. Relief flowed through both men when the repulsors had an effect, deep burns. Half a minute would probably leave it charbroiled and crispy.

"We late to the party?" Bryan's voice was a welcome surprise in the conn pod.

"Bryan? Concepcion? You're the pilots of Lucky Seven?" Steve asked, laughing at the incredible coincidence.

Concepcion answered, "Yes, we are. Good thing we are here in time." Her accent was getting less heavy.

"Looking good, Lucky," Tony said cheerfully as they dodged a mule kick.

"Stop flirting and get fighting, weirdos," said a voice that Steve recognized, if barely. He hadn't gotten much of a chance to speak to Yancy Becket during the christening ceremony.

Between the three jaegers, Grendel didn't stand a chance. Gipsy Danger and Lucky Seven took up supporting roles for Iron Patriot, firing plasma cannons and missiles alike at the kaiju whenever they got the chance and sometimes sneaking in a punch. Tony and Steve were like a gremlin in a toystore, darting this way and that, running the monster in circles when they weren't outright whaling on it with stun spikes.

The kaiju was barely upright, swaying where it stood, when they all decided to just get this done with. As one they raised their hands. Gipsy Danger fired its plasma cannon, Lucky Seven several missiles, and Iron Patriot aimed its repulsors at Grendel until it fell with a weak roar. They stood at the ready as the smoke cleared, wary of it not being dead.

The ribcage had been blown apart by the three different weapons. Nothing could have survived that.

"Damn that's nasty," Bryan commented as Lucky Seven lost its ready stance.

"You get used to it," Raleigh replied, "Good work. Welcome to the ranks, noobs." It was only because Steve and Tony were hooked together that the super soldier knew noobs was slang for newbies.

"You say that like we're all new at this," Tony complained playfully.

"Get through your first post-fight interview, then talk to us," Yancy answered dryly.

The very thought made Steve want to hide in a cave somewhere.

A thought was sent over that equated to Tony knowing some very remote caves in Afghanistan that they could use. It was only half taunting.

Steve sent back a surge of gratitude and a spike of determination. No, he would face this. It couldn't be worse than the USO tours, could it?

The pity that Tony felt for them made Steve wilt a little.

* * *

When they were able to find another channel with the Avengers, Bruce wanted to groan. The layout was that of a late night talk show. This would be either very good or very bad.

"At least it's not Fox News," Sam pointed out helpfully. It was a small comfort.

 _On screen, the host announced, "Thank you, thank you, I'm your host Roger Delanoy! We have two very special guests tonight, Rangers Steve Rogers and Tony Stark of Iron Patriot!" The audience erupted into applause as he gestured to the side of the screen._

 _The camera cut to Steve and Tony entering the studio. They were especially handsome today in dress greens and neatly combed hair, probably the result of the studio execs going nuts. Tony flashed a peace sign at the audience before he shook the host's hand. More subdued, Steve settled for a smile that sent several women to screaming._

"Punk's got a fan following," Bucky commented with a grin.

"That's not new," Sharon pointed out, "The entire internet voted him as having the best butt on the planet." She colored slightly as she realized exactly what she said, but offered no further explanation. It was appreciated.

 _The Avengers squashed themselves onto a loveseat positioned at an angle to Delanoy's chair, Steve throwing an arm over Tony's shoulder for somewhere to put it. When asked if they wanted to switch to two chairs, however, they denied it. "Let's get this interview done and over with," the captain answered with a tight smile._

" _Fair enough," Delanoy conceded, "Let's start at the beginning, then. Congratulations on your first official mission. Any thoughts?" He looked a little bored, like he was waiting to get to the good stuff._

There were several minutes of exactly what Bruce expected, the kind of stuff talk shows are made of. There was some talking about their first official mission in Manila, working with with what must have been two other jaegers- Gipsy Danger and Lucky Seven. It sounded rough.

According to Tony, he had designed the jaeger to bridge the gap between their fighting styles. It was a difficult thing, from the green tinted memories that Bruce had access to, with how radically different Iron Man and Captain America's strengths and weaknesses were. Where Steve stayed and took the damage, Tony dodged; where Tony fought at a distance, Steve was a melee specialist. The weapons that the Iron Patriot was equipped with encompassed a variety of ranges and tactics for maximum effect.

The drift that they talked about was fascinating, a neural connection allowing them to share the load that piloting put on their brains. It got Bruce's own head to buzzing excitedly. While they weren't in need of such technology, it would be a fascinating exercise.

For once Thor looked more in the loop than the rest of them. Was such technology available to him? "Only recently have we on Asgard made such progress into the minds of others," he commented, impressed, "I am more amazed by your mortal capabilities every day that I spend on Midgard."

The excitement drained out of the room when three people's hospitalizations were mentioned. It was only a mention, indeed, the host rudely cut off by Tony: "One went crazy, the other two hemorrhaged in their brains until their memory centers were fried, and one of those had his senses damaged and is now blind in one eye. Those were horrible accidents and we wouldn't have wished them on anyone. Is that what you wanted to know?"

It gave Bruce a better sense of what kind of damage could be done with the 'drift' as well as the benefits of it.

"They tried hooking someone into Steve's brain and he overloaded," Bucky stated, frowning at where their friend sat on screen, "And Natalia- Natasha- must have driven the one crazy." He paused before adding, "I remember training with her. It would drive a normal woman mad."

The silence that followed was both grave and worried. Admittedly, Bruce was less concerned than most if Natasha and Clint were paired up. If anyone could take her memories, it would be the archer.

"I think Tony also caused brain damage. If it was anyone else it would be him," Rhodey put in, arms crossed over his chest. He was probably the only other person who knew Tony well enough to judge.

"I hate to admit it, but you're probably right," Fury agreed with a sigh that sounded more exasperated than usual, "Now shut up and watch." He scowled at them all until their attention was back where he thought it belonged.

 _Now, I heard that your class at jaeger academy was especially playful?" Delanoy's lips quirked up in a weak smile._

As they listened to all the ways that their friends had gotten in trouble, each of the Avengers in their home universe agreed that it was just like them. Replacing the practice staffs with pool noodles? Water gun fights in the hallways? Dye in the shampoo?

"And here I thought Steve was the responsible one," Sharon commented fondly when they heard about him helping nail a Major's entire office to the ceiling. Surprisingly that one was Nat's idea.

Bucky gave her a pitying look. "I go to science conventions for fun," he pointed out, "He's the one that picks fights with everything that moves."

In agreement, Sam snorted. "First time I met him he trolled me. On your left... I swear that man is the devil," he said.

Not for the first time, Bruce was thankful that he had been very far away from the teleported area. If he was there, he probably would have hulked out at least once by the time they all graduated.

There was some talk about friends back home, and Bruce sat in shock as he was told that he had died. More like it was broadcast live that an alternate version of him had died rather than become the Hulk, but it felt the same. According to what Steve and Tony had found out, everyone was dead in this alternate universe. Except…

" _Thankfully Nat lived through that mission in Odessa, and Clint managed to get out of the way of that elephant. Otherwise it's just us and maybe an old friend of mine," Steve said with a smile that looked like it would break if he was touched, "When I looked he was declared MIA in 1945 and no more information ever added. But that's a long hope if I've ever heard one." He let out a false little laugh._

"I just can't get away from the Winter Soldier, can I?" Bucky muttered, glowering down at his hands. It must have been harder to know that his other self had gone through the same thing, except more of it; the given date was November 21, 2019.

Unexpectedly, Sharon piped up. "Think of it this way: other-you won't be the Winter Soldier much longer if they have anything to say about it," she told him. Her smile was ferocious.

If anyone could find and rescue the Winter Soldier (again) it would be Steve, Tony, Natasha, and Clint. The thought was slightly comforting.

"Wait, where am I in this mess?" Sam demanded. He looked unsure whether he should celebrate his anonymity or panic.

"If they didn't mention you, you're probably alive," Sharon provided.

"It would make sense. They're all dead before we met you in this universe, so chances are they didn't know you in that one. It would send up big red flags if you called in saying you didn't know them," Bruce put in thoughtfully.

Sam snorted. "Me, turn down the opportunity to get to know them? You kidding me?" he asked.

"You certainly didn't a few years ago," Sharon said dryly.

" _That brings me to the question that the entire world is wondering," Delanoy said. He gave a dramatic pause._

 _Neither Avenger played along. All he got were polite smiles._

" _Are you two dating?" Delanoy asked._

 _Seriously, Steve looked over at Tony._

 _The genius nodded and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know," he muttered._

 _Delanoy looked expectantly at them, leaning forward in his seat._

" _I thought it was obvious," Steve said, smiling bemusedly._

" _Do we need to start making out right here and now? Will it be obvious enough then?" Tony demanded._

In their home universe, half the room choked. Thor had to beat on Bucky's back to dislodge a chunk of apple that he had unwisely bit into at that moment, and Sharon's mouth had dropped open.

With a groan, Rhodey pulled out his wallet. "The one time I needed him to keep being a coward," he muttered, counting out several bills.

Sam cackled as he received his money. He looked a little less happy as he slid one of those bills to Bruce, who pocketed it. The rest was shoved into his own wallet.

Joining that betting ring was one of the better ideas he'd had recently, the scientist thought. Several people at both SI and SHIELD owed him money now.

With a sigh, Fury dug in his own pocket. Literally the entire room stared as he handed at least a hundred dollars to a very smug Hill. Who knew that Fury was in the betting pool? "What're you looking at?" he snarled at them.

Attention snapped back to the tv, where the audience was shouting for Steve and Tony to kiss.

 _Steve smiled sheepishly even as his shoulders drew up around his ears. Public displays of affection weren't his thing. Probably a remnant of his forties sensibilities._

 _On the other hand, Tony had no compunctions about doing as he was demanded. He practically climbed onto the super soldier's lap in his eagerness. It was several seconds before he released Steve with a loud smack of their lips. "Satisfied?" he asked happily, "Because I'm totally willing to do that again." He grinned up at his boyfriend, a predatory expression that threatened to eat the man up._

" _I-I think we're fine, gentlemen," Delanoy stuttered, "Congratulations." Apparently that was the last thing he expected._

" _Thanks. It's been a long road to get here, but I wouldn't have it any other way," Steve replied with a gentle smile down at his man. It was exactly like the ones that he had been shooting whenever Tony was looking the other way, for years._

" _Seventy years frozen and then another three dancing around each other? Yeah, way to waste a good portion of my life," Tony snarked. He didn't mean it, his eyes danced too much for that._

" _Just saying, you two are sickeningly adorable. What are your plans from here on out?" Delanoy asked, interrupting the impending playful argument._

 _The Avengers looked to each other. Again, there was that silent communication that had gotten so much more common since they were teleported to the other universe. "Just like the Cap ad libbed, and we really have to thank Clint for replacing his speech with Lord of the Rings quotes, we're fighting," Tony said like it should have been obvious, "Until the Rangers release us or the apocalypse take us."_

In their home universe, the conference room was plunged into tension. "Does that mean that even if we do find a way to bring them back, they might not come?" Sam asked, arms folded over his chest.

Bucky shook his head. "When he says something like that, he means it," he answered. He of all people would know.

"To summarize, you're all dead except for Sam, their alternate selves were probably dead also, they use a Gundam suit to punch Godzilla in the face whenever he comes up for air, and Stark somehow got Captain Rogers to date him," Hill said, looking smug at the last point.

When Bruce sneaked a look at Fury, the man looked grumpier than usual.

"I think our friends finally beginning their courtship is the least believable part of this," Thor said, echoing the rest of their thoughts.

"Steve was going to get to it soon enough, if Tony didn't get up the guts first," Sam immediately disagreed, "Nah, Gundam suits. Never expected that."

Bruce couldn't help rolling his eyes.

Rhodey leaned back in his chair and chuckled. "How else are you going to get rid of giant lizards when they try invading?" he asked mockingly. Of course he would find that the more realistic part; he flew in a similarly advanced suit of armor every time they had to go into battle.

"They're fighting monsters by making monsters of their own," Sharon put in, unwillingly impressed.

"The real question here is what to do next," Fury interrupted, pacing back and forth beside the screen. Was he trying to get his coat to billow that way, or was it just made for that?

To try to make himself focus again, Bruce shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses. He needed to get some rest soon. "I think we should keep an eye on the timeline. We'll need to test anything we come up with, of course, and give them the choice, but I doubt they'll be willing to come back until things are done over there, one way or another," he suggested. It was the best he could come up with.

Fury nodded. "Anything on your end, Thor?" he questioned sharply.

The Asgardian took a moment before he spoke. "I am still trying to convince my people that this is a cause worth their time," he answered unhappily, "They still think of our friends as mere mortals, specks of dust in the wind that I should not bother myself with."

If Bruce were less knowledgeable about who was being dealt with, this would make him angrier than usual. As it was, he drummed his fingers on the table. "Not much luck here," he reported grimly, "Tony is the expert with this kind of thing." And of course, it was the expert that they were trying to rescue.

With a huff, Fury closed his good eye for a moment. Perhaps the other one as well. It looked like he was praying for patience. "Keep trying. The rest of us will keep an eye on them," he said, indicating the tv.

Not for the first time, Bruce was glad he had an excuse to escape the meeting room. He was never one for gossip shows anyways. Even if they did star his best friends.

He just wished Natasha was on screen more often.


	11. Bed Rest

Many thanks to the wonderful **Kae Richa** for their devoted reviewing. If it weren't for you, I'd probably get no feedback at all.

 **IMPORTANT NOTICE** : I will be taking a break from updating in favor of Camp NaNo. Don't worry though, I'll be back with a new chapter on the first Wednesday of August!

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 11: Bed Rest**

" _I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."_

― _Woody Allen_

When Tony thought about it later, the beginning of the end was a single point. It wasn't a slow descent like the Fall of the Roman Empire, but a single event that proved to be the gateway to the downward slide.

That event happened on February 29, 2020. Leap day. A unique day for an occurrence that would feel all too common, but be singular in that it was the marker for what would happen next.

Not that anyone knew so. It wasn't until Tony woke up for breakfast that he got the news: Gipsy Danger was down. No, not just down, it was completely and utterly wrecked, like his parents' car. Yancy had been eaten alive and Raleigh was lucky he hadn't died solo piloting the jaeger back to land.

The kaiju threat was more potent than ever, or else Tony would have demanded that he and Steve be allowed to visit their fellow pilot in the hospital. As it was, he sent a fruit basket with a note demanding that they video chat when he was feeling up to it. That took several weeks.

When Raleigh finally did call, it was a little after breakfast on April 17. "Did you hear about the defunding?" he asked grimly.

"Don't even get me started on that," Tony grumbled. The minute he heard he had started bitching about the stupidity. Passive defense was useless in this kind of scenario; maybe if the wall was a delay tactic so that damage could be minimized while the jaegers were scrambled, he could appreciate it.

"They're panicking after what happened last month. They want to try something different and hope that it gives them better results," Steve said, shaking his head. He got up from where he had been lounging against a wall reading the newest Song of Ice and Fire book, in favor of being in view of the camera.

"Are you really trying to defend this?" Raleigh asked doubtfully.

"Just getting into their brains," Steve denied.

"He's a tactician. It's what he does," Tony explained, waving it away, "Either way, it's stupid. They're going to get us all killed with their willful blindness." It reminded him far too much of what happened after the Battle of SHIELD, when the government buried their heads in the sand after they heard about HYDRA. They couldn't see it, it didn't exist.

"Looks like you two will be out of a job soon enough," Raleigh told them with a tight smile.

All it took was a look to know what Steve was thinking. After so many hours in each other's brains, they barely had to say a word anymore. Right now, he agreed but wasn't willing to be quite as rude as Tony.

"If they can take us down before we can get a nuke through that portal," Tony refuted. He excelled at games of chicken like this.

"Just like I said last year," Steve reminded the former pilot.

The grave nod he got was enough. Raleigh had got the message.

"How you holding up?" Steve asked. He had always been the better people person between them.

Raleigh grimaced. "The doc says I'll live," he reported stoically. Under the harsh fluorescent lights he was washed out, with dark bags under his eyes and hair shining in the way that only days without a shower did. He was a little thinner and visibly wilted since they last saw each other in November.

"Good to hear," Steve said approvingly, "We might need you soon."

For the first time this conversation, Raleigh focused completely on them. "What're you planning?" he asked.

With a look between Tony and Steve, the inventor started talking. "Advisory panel. As the war keeps going, the jaegers are going to get damaged. We need someone to work with R&D back in New York and give the upgrade designs an initial check to make sure they would be functional for the pilots. You up for it?" Tony asked. He hoped so. From what he had heard and read, the Beckets were the best before… this. The knowledge of such a veteran pilot would be priceless.

Before Tony even stopped talking, Raleigh was shaking his head. "I can't handle it right now," he said, unable to hide the pain in his eyes, "Not so soon." The look he had now was similar to what Steve looked like in the immediate months after Loki's attempted invasion, probably even more intense in the few weeks he had been defrosted before that.

A flash of memory came forward of an empty boxing gym late at night. The memories, the anger, the despair that flowed through Steve as he took it out on the bags only to find that it didn't help… Yes, the captain knew that feeling well.

"Some advice, one vet to another?" Steve offered.

Raleigh looked politely interested.

"The minute it doesn't feel like someone's carved a hole in your chest with a plasma cannon, get back out there," Steve told him, "It doesn't help to lock yourself up in the past. I would know." He gave the younger man a tight smile through the camera.

"Thanks," Raleigh said roughly. That he didn't reject it outright was a miracle. Jaeger pilots could be tricky about things like emotions, to outsiders at least.

"Okay, getting back to business," Tony said, cutting through the heavy meaningful stuff, "If you do get back in the game, head to SI and tell them I sent you. They'll get a hold of me and we can go from there. For now, what's Gipsy looking like?" He needed to know the operational status of every jaeger possible, if this madman's gambit was going to work.

Again, Raleigh looked like he was in pain. From how he rubbed his left arm absently, he may have been. "Left arm is gone, hole right above the reactor, conn pod ripped into," he reported in a grunt, "Why?"

This time Tony needed to see if Steve was on board with telling about this. The nod he got told him to keep talking. "Pentecost is going to ground once funding runs out on the jaeger program," Tony said with a startling amount of approval, considering this is the military he's talking about, "He's going to need funds, he's going to need jaegers, to keep going. We've got one, we need to know if we can get the other." It would be more cost effective to repair a damaged jaeger than fabricate a new one. Maybe not easier, but right now that wasn't the concern.

"The eggheads said there's no hope of restoration. They sent her to Oblivion Bay," Raleigh said. It sounded like he had lost more than a machine when they took her to the jaeger graveyard.

Even after just one fight, Tony knew he would feel the same way if Iron Patriot met that fate. He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded. "I'll get in contact with Oblivion Bay, see if I can get her back and running," he said. If it were at all possible, he would.

There were no words, Raleigh just swallowed and nodded jerkily. For a minute Tony thought he would excuse himself, and he wouldn't blame the guy. Instead he said, "I see him sometimes. Yancy."

This was worse than any of the super yucky emotional stuff before it, but Tony would try. Or at least he would try to not put his foot in his mouth.

"For a while I would sometimes see Bucky out of the corner of my eye," Steve shared, "I like to think he was still there, trying to make sure I didn't get into any trouble I couldn't get myself out of. Maybe Yancy is trying to do that for you." The situation was different; Bucky was alive, in this universe and at home. But maybe it would help.

From the shaky laugh Raleigh gave, it did. "Yeah, that would be him. He always was the level headed one between us," he agreed.

Steve grinned dopily at the camera. "You're not going crazy, Raleigh," he assure the other man.

It seemed to be exactly what Raleigh needed to hear. When he signed off a few minutes later, he seemed the slightest bit happier.

"Item one on the to-do list down," Tony mumbled to himself between calls, "Now for number two." He clicked the call button on Stacker Pentecost's contact.

"It was good to see him… alive," Steve said. He couldn't exactly say 'living', that was too far off the mark for now. But this was better than nothing.

Before Tony could do more than give a hum of agreement, the Marshal picked up. "Look who it is," Pentecost said, raising an expectant eyebrow. He obviously had shit to do.

"After your government funding is done, you're heading off the grid, aren't you," Tony said. He gave a little smirk at the serious but exasperated look he got.

"Are you in?" Pentecost questioned. He didn't even ask how they knew, just accepted it. The man could almost match Thor in terms of rolling with it.

Tony couldn't hold in his snort.

More respectfully, Steve said, "Yes, sir. We even have an offer for you, if you're interested." He stood straight, shoulders back and hands behind his back, classic military. It was kind of adorable and kind of hot.

"Is it an offer I can't refuse?" Pentecost asked seriously.

If it weren't for the situation, Tony would have keeled over laughing. If anyone had told him two years ago that he would have an in-joke with a military guy who wasn't Rhodey or Steve, he would have used them as target practice for the Iron Man suit. "You can, but it would be a very bad idea," Tony answered once he was sure he wouldn't crack up, "I went over the budget at SI and we can fund you to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars annually plus repair of one to three jaegers per year, depending on how extensive the damage is."

The eyebrow was joined high up on the Marshal's face by its twin. "Not what I expected from you, but I'll take it," he decided, "When does this start?" He pulled a pad of paper and a pencil over to him and began scribbling on it.

"As soon as I can shove the paperwork through," Tony promised, "Should be in about a month. Any ideas what jaeger we should start on?" He hoped Gipsy Danger, but others would give him a decent enough challenge.

"Diablo Intercept, if you can get Chile's permission to work on it," Pentecost answered after a small amount of thought, "The reactor was destroyed but otherwise it's functional. We've already got plans to handle Gipsy Danger." The smile he gave was shark-like.

"Don't try getting him back in the pilot's seat too soon," Steve cautioned the man, "He's not doing so well. Might be a good idea to try to find new pilots instead." He didn't look happy about it, but there was no denying the sense in that.

"I'll worry about Becket. You handle yourselves," Pentecost told them in the voice he usually used as Marshal. It was accompanied by a pointed look that reminded Tony very much of if Pepper was in Fury's body. Now there was a thought he could live without.

"Let us know when you need us, and we'll be there," Steve said, ever the soldier.

With a nod, Pentecost cut the call off.

Left on their own once again, Tony leaned back in his chair and Steve went back to resting against the table. The room was quiet, only the footsteps outside the door and their own breathing keeping it from dead silence. "That went better than I thought," the inventor said idly.

"You didn't insult anyone. Color me impressed," Steve commented sarcastically. He knew how slick his boyfriend could be when it was necessary.

The screen lit up with an icon of a phone ringing. The name above specified that it was Nat.

"Really?" Tony grumbled, "Better get it out of the way." He jabbed the green icon to pick up.

When the image came through, it was of a similar concrete room but with bunk beds rather than one large bed. In the focus of the camera, Nat wore black workout clothes with her hair tied up. "This has to be quick, we're between training rounds. No signs of the Soldier over this way, but we'll keep looking," she said, calm as ever.

"Thanks. Keep us up to date," Steve said with a sharp nod.

"Of course," Nat agreed before she hung up.

Immediately Steve deflated, looking disappointed. He took a deep breath and nodded to himself.

It was no surprise that Old Man Winter was hard to track down, Tony thought. One didn't become a ghost story by being easy to find.

"We'll find him," Tony assured his boyfriend. It was instinct to put a hand on the other man's knee to try and offer comfort, but it was also instinct to retract it quickly to keep from being told off.

Steve put a large hand over his, keeping it there. "I know. It's just… He's been suffering for _seventy five years_. He doesn't deserve that," he murmured.

At first, the two admittedly had their problems, but after Tony saw the files detailing all the torture and brainwashing Bucky had gone through… It was HYDRA who killed his mom, as far as he was concerned. Bucky was just one of the more tormented victims of theirs.

In fact, as of his getting sucked into this alternate universe, Tony had launched phase one of their joint plan to reveal to the world that Steve and Rhodey were _not_ the boy scouts everyone thought of them as. It involved rubber ducks and hot sauce. Hopefully Bucky had held back on the rest of their nefarious plot.

"All the better for us to be here and help," Tony pointed out. Maybe that was one of the reasons they were here. If he believed in a higher power, he would say this was part of its plan.

It took a moment for Steve to give the same sort of jerky nod that Raleigh had earlier. He was getting sucked into his head again. That wouldn't do.

All the better for Tony to kiss him out of it. He pulled his boyfriend down to sit on his lap and ignored the squeak of protest the chair gave at the added weight. In contrast, their lips were gentle.

By the time someone knocked on the door to call them out for lunch, not much was on their minds except each other. And maybe a quickie here in the lab. Everyone knew to stay out unless they were called in, after the second time someone walked in on them.

It was better than Steve moping.

* * *

Years passed and as other jaegers fell, Iron Patriot's star only continued to rise. They were one of six that went undefeated into 2024. Six out of over a hundred.

There was Cherno Alpha over at Vladivostok; Striker Eureka down under; the Widowmaker in Nagasaki; Crimson Typhoon of Hong Kong; and Mammoth Apostle sharing the LA shatterdome with Iron Patriot. The pilots all ended up working together at one point or another and quickly learned how to best fight together. To that end, the Widowmaker and Cherno Alpha were almost as lethal a team as Iron Patriot and Striker Eureka. No one could beat the combination of the Widowmaker and Iron Patriot, however, a singular point of pride for both teams.

The pilots themselves grew ever closer but harder as they struggled to keep the coasts from being plundered and walls from being breached. The Kaidonovskys were as cold as their homeland, the Hansens brash and hot tempered, the Wei triplets secretive. Not that the Esparzas were easy to get along with either, but Tony was used to them by now.

Looking back at their days in the academy, Tony could see why the training was so rigorous. At first it was excessive, but since all the other jaegers were gone… The remaining pilots were being pulled from their beds and meals more and more often.

Some of those jaegers were able to be repaired to fight another day, but the pool of pilots was dwindling too fast. Diablo Intercept was repaired twice, Nova Hyperion once, before there were no more pilots left for them. It was just the current batch left.

Lucky Seven fought until they couldn't anymore. The pilots' careers ended when Concepcion's back was broken and she was paralyzed from the waist down; Bryan refused to take another pilot. Instead he did the one thing that could surprise her: he asked her to marry him the minute they left the hospital. Again due to kaiju attacks none of the Avengers could go to the wedding, but they were able to see it through a video chat, at least. Last Tony had heard, they were living in Concepcion's hometown in Ecuador and thinking of adoption.

The Winter Soldier had been found in 2023, but he went on the run the moment he was free. It was impractical at best for the Avengers to hunt him down with the kaiju threat, so they had to settle for knowing he would be alright by himself. Their Bucky had done it, after all.

Things were looking desperate at best. Then Insurrector came.

It was polite enough to come straight to them in LA, and even made its appearance between lunch and dinner. What it wasn't nice enough to do was die right when it was needed.

"Is it me or is this thing heat resistant!" Tony shouted when the repulsors had little effect on the kaiju's thick hide. They'd already expended the shoulder rockets, or else he'd use those.

Helpfully, JARVIS put in, "It does appear so, sir. Perhaps the unibeam is worth a shot?"

In the back of his head, Steve gave the go ahead. Out loud he swore as he pummeled it with stun spikes and the roll of nickels alike.

"Go ahead, JARVIS," Tony ordered through gritted teeth. He was holding Insurrector in place so that its head could hopefully be smashed in, and praying it would be over soon.

The roar from outside gave them a feeling of satisfaction and relief. Finally they had a weapon that worked.

A clawed tail grasped at them and they had to dart away to avoid further damage. The screen was already showing a good deal of armor torn off the torso and left arm. They couldn't afford to lose much more.

"The unibeam works but everything else we've got is useless!" Steve reported. Only his enhanced body was allowing him to keep up.

Tony was wearing out fast; he really was getting too old for this shit. "What you got, Clintasha?" he asked, praying for a miracle.

"Missiles are gone, it sounds like the pulse gauntlets won't be any help, but we have the unibeam and the plasma cannons," Clint answered. Exactly what Tony had hoped not to hear.

Again, Steve swore. The past few years had been quite the eye opener where he was concerned; he was an army man and it showed.

A decision was made and Tony knew exactly what was going to happen. He was okay with it, if it meant Nat and Clint would get through this. Anyone else would be running for the hills.

When he felt Tony's agreement, Steve sent over a pulse of relieved regret. It was the only thing he could think of. "We'll hold it in place. You guys blast it with your plasma cannons," he instructed the other pilots, like it was a normal day of saving the world.

"What are you doing! That's suicide!" Clint shrieked in their ears.

Headquarters' commands were ignored. Mammoth wouldn't be scrambled in time to be of any help here.

"The plasma cannons are too slow to load, we need to buy you time," Steve answered as they dodged an attack and swung a fist into the kaiju's face. They danced around, using its own weight and momentum against it.

"We're laying down on the wire," Tony said, remembering the helicarrier conference room all those years ago.

Yet another pulse of regret, and an apology, were sent his way. _I was wrong. You really are a hero._

Assurance and forgiveness were returned. Truthfully, Tony felt there was nothing to forgive. At that time, Steve had been right.

There was quiet on the other side of the comms. Only the roaring of the kaiju broke what would otherwise be complete silence. It was a ghostly moment, everything felt like a dream.

"What do we need to do?" Nat asked, deadly calm.

"Plasma cannons, unibeam, everything you've got," Steve instructed, love and gratitude for his team flooding the neural connection with such strength that Tony had to blink moisture out of his eyes, "We'll hold it." He shifted his stance, preparing for it to rush at them.

Without thought Tony moved with him. Time to die as they'd lived the past few years: together, as heroes.

The kaiju charged; Iron Patriot met it. And as they struggled, there were noises of plasma cannons charging, then firing, and Clint was chanting, "Die, die, die!" A shrieking, tearing noise erupted from the conn pod above them. Pain and alarm rushed through Steve and into Tony, a warning to disconnect himself because he could feel his head was split open- and then he was gone and there was blackness.

"Steve! Wake up! STEVE!" Tony shrieked as he watched the right hemisphere lose power.

The shatterdome was screeching in his ear to unhook himself; Steve's brain scans were showing no meaningful activity. He was piloting solo.

No matter that Steve was gone and Tony would hemorrhage soon, they still had a damn job to do. It would get done, no matter what. Nat and Clint and the world were counting on them.

"JARVIS, give me the reigns! All of it!" Tony snarled, holding Insurrector with the one hand he did have control over right now.

"That will certainly result in brain da-" JARVIS began to point out. If an AI could be worried, this one was.

"I don't really care," Tony snapped, "Do it!" The pain wasn't just in his head anymore, it was in his chest, right under the arc reactor. If this was what a broken heart felt like, he was glad he wouldn't have to live with one much longer.

Then JARVIS gave him full control and it burned. Everything burned, from the tips of his hair to his toenails. The pain was ignored in favor of doing exactly as he'd promised, holding Insurrector where it was. A thought activated the unibeam.

Blood dripped down his face and it felt like his skull was being crushed from the inside.

The kaiju's torso burst like a rancid meat pinata. With a final, weak sound like a whimper, it fell.

Tony drew back to a standing position and started walking. This was wrong, he was still alive. Why was he still alive?

"Where are you going?" Clint called over the intercoms.

"Back to base. I'm tired," Tony answered shortly.

The trip was far too long and short at the same time. It was just across the city. If only it were longer, maybe he would have descended into unconsciousness rather than witness the emergency personnel surround Steve and him. JARVIS must have called them.

Traitor, Tony thought mildly as he stood, dazed in the crowd.

Numbly, he allowed himself to be unhooked from the harness. "JARVIS, fold up the suits," Tony called without realizing what he was saying. When he was in his clothes again, he was loaded onto a gurney and wheeled out of the conn pod after Steve.

Why was he still alive?

The question screwed with him even as he lost track of where he was. Hallways and faces and voices all blended together as Tony gratefully lost consciousness. Somewhere in the back of his mind he could feel a bright spot he only knew as Steve, and he curled his full awareness around that precious bit of light in his otherwise dark mind.

He never wanted to leave.

It could have been minutes or days before Tony came back to himself. Either way it was unwilling, kicking and screaming to go back to that place where he could feel like Steve was still there. Without his permission, his eyes blinked open and body moved. Everything was stiff.

There were voices and then Nat's face warbled into being above him. "Tony? Can you hear me?" she asked, concern in her usually blank voice.

"Cool your heels, vixen," he snapped. His voice was weak and tongue swollen with thirst.

The smile she gave made her beautiful, even with worried eyes. "Open your mouth, I've got a sponge with some water for you," Nat instructed. She held what looked like a lollipop, but it was made of blue foam.

Automatically Tony did so, obeying his body's screams for liquid. It felt heavenly on his tongue and he smacked his lips with a sigh of relief.

Then he remembered why he was in the hospital and any feeling of contentment left him. Steve was gone, he couldn't feel his super soldier. He had piloted solo after Steve went, helped finish off Insurrector.

Why was he still alive?

A doctor appeared with Clint in tow, and Bird Brain actually looked relieved to see him awake. "You gave us all a heart attack, man," the archer complained.

Though Nat gave him a look, she didn't refute it.

"It seems that jaeger pilots are made of sterner stuff than anyone would have thought," the doctor said with a smile, "I am Doctor Solange Kavanagh. How are you feeling, Ranger Stark?" She was a pretty middle aged woman with silver streaks in her dark hair that reminded him of Bruce.

A pang went through Tony. He'd never see his science bro again.

But Steve was gone.

"Why am I here?" he asked quietly.

"You do not remember?" Doctor Kavanagh asked, getting ready to jot things down.

"I piloted solo. That generally kills people, right?" Tony questioned. As far as he remembered reading in his research to design Iron Patriot and the Widowmaker, the only solo drift survivor had been Pentecost, when his copilot was knocked out in Tokyo. Now there was Raleigh, and apparently him.

Behind the doctor's back, Clint and Nat had one of those wordless conversations that had gotten so much more common since they started piloting. It was all worried looks and determined nods, probably talking about him in their heads. The assholes.

On the other hand, Doctor Kavanagh nodded and jotted down a note happily. "You're the third solo drift survivor we have," she half-confirmed, "You're lucky." She surveyed him over wire rimmed spectacles with a smile.

When Tony looked, he was the only patient in the room. It made sense to put a body in the morgue, but part of him had hoped…

No, he was being silly. Even a super soldier couldn't survive having his head split open. Awareness faded again.

A few times Tony came back to himself. Mostly he stayed in the darkness of his own mind, trying to find that spark of Steve that had stayed behind. When he only found the inky blackness of his own mind, he panicked and spiraled downward.

And down.

And down.

And hoped he didn't wake up.

* * *

When Bruce came back into the conference room, it was both for a status report and to see what was happening in the other universe. There had been a few supervillains trying their luck since Iron Man and Captain America were out of town, but the new team had beaten them back.

It had only pissed off Bruce even more handily, since that interrupted his research. The Hulk smashed everything in sight with glee and restored his scientist alter ego to the fore faster than ever, wanting to get 'Tin Man' back as fast as possible. The sudden display of affection was baffling and wonderful.

After a combined argument from Thor and Loki of all people, the Asgardians had begun to consider helping open a portal to this alternate universe. It also helped that Bruce had demonstrated their ability to receive camera signals from wherever the other Avengers were. The final meeting had been between Odin and Fury, and it was unreal to look at two men who were so opposite yet the same.

The scientists sent from Asgard to assist in bringing their heroes home were brilliant. Nothing less could be expected from a people who built the Bifrost. Working with them was a dream come true for Bruce, and when he made a connection that they hadn't… Respect was a wonderful thing.

When he got in, Bruce immediately knew that this wasn't the right time to report. The air was too tense, those in the room (Sam, Bucky, and Rhodey) so focused on the screen that they barely noticed his entrance.

On screen was a news report. According to the date, it was July 5, 2014- the day after Steve's hundred and sixth birthday as counted in that universe. It was labeled as Los Angeles, with banners under the main screen showing little trivia facts about the two jaegers shown beating on a kaiju.

A lump rose up in Bruce's throat and he silently took a seat when he saw that the Widowmaker was piloted by Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff. After all these years of fighting monsters, she was fine.

In the footage, the red and blue jaeger pummeled the kaiju (labeled Insurrector) while the black, red, and purple one took pot shots with missiles, electric fists that reminded Bruce of Nat's widow bites, hand cannons, and what must have been a unibeam. None of Iron Patriot's weapons beyond missiles seemed to have any effect.

"We have audio coming in," the news announcer said, shock in her voice.

The sound was full of popping and crashing, but the voices were distinct. "We'll hold it in place. You guys blast it with your plasma cannons," Steve panted into the mic.

"What are you doing! That's suicide!" Clint screeched.

Bucky visibly stiffened. The way he crouched forward was like he wanted to launch himself through the screen.

The explanation about the plasma cannons being too slow made the maneuver make sense. Steve and Tony could politely be called reckless, but only if there was a good reason for it. They weren't suicidal.

"We're laying down on the wire." The words Tony spoke sent a shiver of dread down Bruce's spine.

"They don't expect to live," Sam said, horrified, as they watched Iron Patriot grapple the kaiju. It ripped into the armor with hands and a clawed tail alike as it was held in place.

It seemed Nat knew it too. Her voice was deadly as she asked what they needed to do.

What followed was one of the most terrifying things Bruce had ever witnessed. The kaiju roared and struggled to get away but Iron Patriot's grip was too strong, and they were determined to keep it in place. At its back Clint and Natasha fired, the archer screaming at it to, "Just die already!" Even as Insurrector was in its death throes, it kept fighting.

Two screams that Bruce recognized all too well echoed through the television. "Steve! Wake up! STEVE!" Tony's voice showed all the agony and fear in the world.

"Stark, disengage! Now!" shouted a heavily accented female voice, "There's no brain activity! He's gone! Get out of there, you've gone solo!"

"No no no no no no NO!" Bucky screamed at the tv, "Don't you dare die over there, you stupid punk!"

Sam pulled the Winter Soldier back into his seat. "Wait, we don't know if it's the equipment," he advised in a shaking voice.

Bruce hoped it was. Adrenaline spiked and in any other situation he would worry about the Hulk making an appearance. As it was, all he could do was watch and pray.

"JARVIS, give me the reigns! All of it!"

"That will certainly result in brain da-"

"I don't really care! Do it!" Tony was disobeying every order being shouted into his ear, from headquarters and his teammates alike, in continuing to hold the kaiju in place for Natasha and Clint. Even worse, he was completely ignoring the fact that his brain would be fried after this.

The sudden thought struck Bruce as he watched Insurrector get blasted apart that Tony had given up. From how his friend kept going, walked the jaeger back to the hanger even with his brain burning under the strain, he wanted to die. But he didn't get his wish.

There was a sudden cacophony of voices, probably rescue personnel. "No signs of awareness for Rogers." "Jesus, I can see his brain." "Stark is dazed but awake." The reporter on screen looked as horrified and sickened as Bruce felt, listening to the medical stats being poured into their ears.

One voice rose above the rest, a young man. "Holy shit! Rogers is still alive!" he shouted.

Hope almost choked Bruce. Was it possible that Steve could make it through this? The troubling thought that he might not recover the whole way was shoved aside.

"The pilots of Iron Patriot are being rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Status updates will come when we get them," the newscaster promised, "For now, we have a statement from Marshal Vilaro of the Los Angeles shatterdome." She looked expectantly up at the camera before the view switched to a Hispanic woman in a precise blue dress uniform.

Now that the main excitement was done with, Bruce saw fit to share what he originally came in to say. "We might have a theory as to how to open a portal over there," he said.

Bucky and Sam, who had slumped down in relief, turned their heads to look at him. "Good," the latter man said tiredly, "When they get back, I'm gonna kill them both for this." He looked like he meant it.

"Get in line," Bucky grumbled. He gave the screen the evil eye from where he rested his chin on his arms.

With a sigh, Bruce left the room. It was time to get back to work, he had been gone too long.


	12. Sleeping Beauty

Thank you very much to **Naemir** and **Kae Richa** for your reviews! You're splendid, as always.

And many thanks to the rest of you as well, for your patience with me. Unfortunately I have to ask you to have a bit more. I got in a rut last month and haven't written much for Jaeger Days, so it'll probably be a couple weeks until the next chapter. Don't worry about abandonment, I will finish this. It'll just take a bit longer than usual.

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing under copyright.

* * *

 **Chapter 12: Sleeping Beauty**

" _Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can."_

― _Nicholas Sparks, At First Sight_

Steve glanced up when the door opened, and smiled grimly when he saw the doctor again.

"Any changes?" Doctor Kavanagh asked. She began the usual tests, checking vitals and looking for physical signs of ailments, scribbling on her clipboard as she did so.

"Not that I can see," Steve answered. Instead of going back to his book, he looked at Tony just as he had so many times before.

Weeks without movement had taken their toll on the genius. He was being fed through a tube and hydrated with an IV, and it was showing; a physique that had always been slim was rapidly going straight to skeletal. His skin looked papery and ashen, and he hadn't woken in days.

Not for the first time, Steve cursed his terrible timing. Whether it was being put through a CAT scan or trying to find food or turning in paperwork, he was always out of the room in those few minutes Tony spent awake. It was never long enough for him to get back and see those beautiful brown eyes.

"Same old, same old," Doctor Kavanagh said, writing it on her clipboard. Instead of wishing him a good day and stepping out, she dawdled this time. The way she chewed on the inside of her cheek and fidgeted with her pen spoke of a thought that wasn't good but wouldn't leave her alone.

"Is there anything you need?" Steve asked tiredly. The last time he had slept well was the night before Insurrector. The bed they let him use here was uncomfortable and over the years he had gotten used to having Tony's warm body curled up behind him. It felt wrong to sleep alone.

Hesitantly, the doctor asked, "Is it possible that Ranger Stark doesn't want to wake up?" The way she grimaced looked like she had just said a particularly violent oath, but was determined to go through with it.

The thought hadn't struck Steve. "I don't want to think so," he said, looking back at Tony, "but it's possible." Why that would be the case, he wasn't so sure about.

"Sorry, it was a stupid thought," Doctor Kavanagh said, shaking her head before she strode out the door.

When the door clicked closed, Steve sighed and leaned forward to rest his forehead beside Tony's hip. The other man was cold to the touch these days. It was like they were losing him one day at a time and helpless to do anything about it.

The scans had all come back slightly damaged, but nothing that they hadn't seen before. More akin to a concussion than the lesions that other solo pilots had suffered. There were no tumors, no holes in the brain, nothing that should keep Tony asleep this long. He should have been awake before Steve was.

And oh, that was a memory Steve hadn't wanted to revisit.

When he crashed into the ice back in 1945 he had broken almost his whole body, only his heart and brain mostly functional. By the time SHIELD dug him out, it had all healed except for where they had to rebreak a few of the bones in his face to set them right. For that, he had mostly been out cold, so to speak.

This time Steve felt every second of his skull knitting itself together under the bandages. According to the doctors he should have died before Tony even got them back to the shatterdome (and he was going to have _words_ with his boyfriend about that stunt) but had stayed stable throughout. Which should have been impossible, since they could see his damn brain.

As it was, he had been released a week later without any negative effects. No problems with mental processes, motor control, anything. The only sign Steve had his head sliced open was some scarring and that he needed to regrow some of his hair.

Nat and Clint had been able to stay for that week, as the four had put each other down as next of kin, but after that were shipped straight back to Japan.

That was three weeks ago. Since then the scars faded and his hair started growing out again. To make the unevenness a little less obvious he had taken an electric razor and given himself a buzz cut, which he knew Tony would murder him for.

If he ever woke up. It seemed less and less likely with each day.

The day passed without a single sign of wakefulness. Near night time, Tony's breathing started stuttering.

Steve immediately pressed the call button and for good measure shouted out the door, "We need help in here!" His heart pounded in his chest for the few seconds he had to wait, head swiveling from side to side hopefully.

A nurse came rushing. "What's happened?" he asked in an English accent, sliding past Steve. The minute the nurse saw what was happening, he tried to wake Tony to no avail. That avenue tried, the nurse pushed a button on his walkie-talkie. "We need a doctor in 257D, stat. Patient's breathing is coming unevenly and there are no signs of wakefulness," he reported.

Steve heard a crackly voice answer in the affirmative. All he could do was watch the nurse check vitals and perform small tests. Last time he felt this helpless, he was watching Tony take that nuke through the portal over New York all those years ago.

Doctor Kavanagh came running in and within ten minutes a respirator was helping Tony breathe.

The sight was more than Steve could take; he slumped onto the bed he had been loaned and his throat closed around a sob. That was too close. And unless Tony woke up soon, it would only get worse.

A hand settled on his shoulder. "Are you alright, sir?" the nurse asked kindly, "Is there anything I can get you?" Honest blue eyes peered down at him from a thin face.

"Maybe some tissues," Steve requested. Each word felt like it was coated in sandpaper as it tore out of his throat.

The hand left, but soon returned with a box of tissues.

"Thanks," Steve said, taking one and blowing his suddenly stuffy nose on it.

"Call if there's anything else I can do," the nurse replied, and with a last pat to Steve's broad shoulder he left.

For a moment Steve took care of wiping away his tears and clearing his nose. Once the tissues were in the rubbish, he finally looked up to see that Doctor Kavanagh was still there. "What's happening?" he asked hoarsely.

The doctor's normally sunny face was one of dread. It was the same look Clint had when he just figured something out and felt so stupid for not knowing before, but wished he wasn't right. Admittedly the message was complex, but he had experience in knowing it when he saw it.

"What is it?" Steve asked again.

When the doctor spoke, her voice was hesitant. That was completely unlike her. "Well, when I got Ranger Stark as a patient I watched the last battle to see exactly what happened, and the last he heard of you was that you had no brain activity. After that he piloted solo, and then extended it as long as he could until the emergency crew got to you. I thought he'd heard them say you were still alive, but maybe…" she trailed off.

It was easy to put the pieces together. "You think he was trying to kill himself," Steve said, and each word left a foul taste in his mouth

Doctor Kavanagh's face twisted. "I think that when he heard you were basically brain dead, he couldn't stand the idea of living without you. If I'm right, there's nothing wrong with his body that's keeping him under. He's dying of a broken heart," she told him gently.

A hysterical laugh left Steve before he could control it. He squeezed his eyes closed in pain. "But I'm right here…" he whispered.

"And I think you should stay here," Doctor Kavanagh told him, back to her no-nonsense demeanor, "Talk to him, sit on the bed with him, hold his hand, anything to impress that you're here. Doctor's orders."

That was a treatment Steve could get on board with. It was nothing he wasn't already doing. "Yes, ma'am," he said automatically.

"At ease, soldier. I'll be back in an hour to see how he's reacting to the ventilator," Doctor Kavanagh said with a sliver of a smile before she left.

The minute the door closed, Steve grabbed his boyfriend's hand and pressed the lax palm to his cheek. "Please Tony, please come back. I'm right here," he pleaded.

There was no answer, but Steve wasn't going to let that stop him. He was going to fight tooth and nail for Tony. Any other alternative was unthinkable.

"Remember that one time I tried to go on vacation but everyone kept popping in? That was messed up. You all were lucky I was getting bored with peace and quiet, or I would've ripped you a new one," Steve began. He talked long into the night.

* * *

It was comfortable in the darkness. Only a little bit of that light was left, but Tony wrapped himself further around it. He had to protect what he had left of Steve.

If he lost that...

Sometimes he thought he could hear Steve's voice. But that couldn't be right.

No, he wasn't dead yet. That had to be a delusion his brain designed to keep him going. Not for the first time he was his own worst enemy.

Tony sank deeper.

* * *

The moment Steve woke up from his catnap, he knew he wasn't alone. Between the beeps of the monitors and humming of the ventilator there was no out of place noise, but something still wasn't right. Immediately he was on red alert.

Without moving, he gathered as much information as he could. Nothing was wrong that he could consciously sense, but he knew without knowing.

"Who are you?"

Steve's heart thundered in his chest at the familiar voice. "Bucky?" he asked hopefully.

The answer was in a growl from a dark corner of the room by the door. "I said, _who are you_?"

It was finally time to face the music. Slowly, Steve sat up on the hospital bed and then got to his feet. He turned around to face Bucky, the gleam of silver eyes from the corner almost making him smile. "It's a very long and difficult story, and I know you won't believe me at first," he said carefully, "My name is Steve Rogers."

As fast as Steve himself could move, Bucky was across the room and slamming him into the wall.

It was an automatic reaction to fight back, kneeing and punching until they were silhouettes in front of the window. Each examined the other critically, watching for threatening movements.

"You're _not_ Steve Rogers. He died in 1932," Bucky hissed. The rage in his eyes was both heartwarming and hair raising.

"We used to build forts in the living room with blankets and the couch cushions," Steve blurted out, "and your mom made the best apple pie in Brooklyn, and you learned Gaelic to understand my mom when she would tease you." It was one of the first things he could think of to prove this was really him. That was how his Bucky had proved he remembered, it should hopefully work here too.

It was obvious when the words penetrated Bucky's thick skull. "Stevie?" he asked hopefully.

Those two syllables and all the emotions within nearly broke the captain's heart. "Yeah," he confirmed with a small smile, "It's me, Buck. An alternate version, but still me."

Before either really knew what was going on, they were hugging. It felt good to have his friend right there again, safe and loved.

Suddenly everything hit. This is Bucky but not _his_ Bucky, and he was far from home in an alternate universe. The man he loved wouldn't wake up from his coma because he was stupid and stubborn, and they were fighting off giant monsters at what felt like every hour of the day now. Friends were being made and lost in the same breath, and celebrity status was lonely. Before he knew what he was doing, Steve burst into tears.

Obviously startled, Bucky tensed up. But when the blonde tried to withdraw, he wouldn't allow that and started rubbing the broad back with his flesh hand. Soothing noises slipped out, probably without him even noticing.

A choking noise from the bed only made the sobs come harder, but Steve looked anyways. What he saw astounded him.

Tony was flailing about on the bed, pulling at the tubes wildly. Wide brown eyes darted all around the room before settling on Steve and Bucky, and he began pulling the tubs out of his nose and mouth with more determination.

The idea that _dear lord, Tony was awake_ nearly paralyzed Steve with relief. He pressed the call button on the side of Tony's bed, able to find it by memory after all this time, and slid onto his bed.

Bucky tried sneaking off, freezing when his arm was caught by a strong grip.

"Tony, stop pulling at the tubes. Bucky, you're not going anywhere," Steve ordered, unwilling to let either of them go right now.

The door opened and that same nurse with the ponytail walked in. When he saw that Tony was awake, his grin could have lit up the room. "Just a mo', I'll get the doctor," he told them, and zoomed away like he was on rocket skates.

Before anything of note could be said, especially by Tony, the room was full of nurses and doctors. The tubes were taken out of Tony's nose and mouth (with the night shift doctor glaring at him the whole time for pulling on them) and tests of his level of consciousness performed. All of them were passed with flying colors and Tony complaining the whole time.

"What woke you?" asked the doctor, amazed, when he realized that there was no mental damage that he could detect.

"Steve went and got in a fight without me," Tony snorted, and his eyes promised death, "Of course I was going to wake up. Can't let him get his fine ass handed to him." He had to be joking. There was no sign of a joke.

The idea that he could have woken his boyfriend anytime simply by getting in a fist fight made Steve want to both laugh and cry. It would have been harder to do it in the hospital room in any other circumstance but...

Bucky seemed similarly amazed and confused. When the doctor and nurses looked at him, he shrank into himself and looked ready to bolt.

"Should I call security?" asked the nurse expectantly. His hand hovered over his walkie talkie.

"No, it was a misunderstanding. Everything's fine now," Steve assured them with his best 'Captain America smile of honesty'.

Though they all looked dubiously at the men, the staff took them at their word. "No more fights inside the hospital," the doctor reprimanded, before going back to Tony. He immediately ordered every test on the planet to see if his patient's brain was damaged, and wheeled him out within minutes.

The moment they were alone in the room, both Steve and Bucky sighed and slumped over onto the guest bed. "I guess I should thank you for trying to kill me," the former said dryly.

"Is your life always like this?" Bucky asked, eyeing the door warily.

"We're jaeger pilots, and before that we were superheroes. This is mundane," Steve answered.

The noise Bucky made was humored and dismayed at the same time. "I knew you were a stubborn punk, but this is beyond what I ever imagined," he said, shifting his gaze to the man beside him, "So how did you live long enough to turn into a damn buffalo?" Was the look in his eyes frightened?

"In our universe, the experiment I signed up for was what the enemy was trying to recreate with the Winter Soldier experiments," Steve answered, confirming what his friend was really asking.

Bucky's expression looked like he had been punched in the gut by the Hulk. "You went through that too?" he asked in a horrified whisper.

"Kind of. It was a little less… sadistic for me. I went into it willingly, as a special project for the US Army, so there was no actual torture or any mind wiping. Just the serum, electricity, and then this," Steve said, gesturing at his body. He'd never say how much it hurt. At least to Bucky, he knew he didn't need to.

This shook Bucky almost more than finding out an alternate version of his friend was here and alive. He paced restlessly within the confines of Steve's hold on him, not even attempting to shrug the hand off.

In the near silent room, Steve's phone rang.

Both men jumped at the sudden noise. When they realized that it was benign, Bucky let out a few embarrassed giggles and Steve sighed at himself, letting his friend go for the moment. He answered the phone. "Rogers speaking," he said.

"We have a Category Four headed for New Guinea, and Mammoth is out of service. Any change with Stark?" the LOCCENT officer's familiar voice was unwelcome.

"He's awake and in testing now," Steve confirmed. The reminder made that happy bubble in his chest grow again. Everything would be fine now.

"How soon can you get him to the shatterdome?" the LOCCENT officer asked seriously.

"Not within a month, at the least," Steve said strongly, ignoring Bucky startling at the sudden change in his tone, "He's lost too much muscle. Him getting into a jaeger right now will kill both of us."

The tap on his shoulder was unexpected. "I can do it," Bucky volunteered.

"Hold the phone," Steve ordered. He covered the mouthpiece and stared at this alternate version of his old friend in disbelief.

"You need two pilots to drive one of those things, right?" Bucky said uncomfortably, "We both have the Serum, so brain damage won't be an issue with me. I can do it." His eyes blazed with the need to do _something_.

When Steve thought about it for a few seconds, it made sense. But then there was the question of melding minds… "You know that we'd be sharing each other's memories?" he asked cautiously. He knew he could take any memories the Winter Soldier could throw at him. Maybe not without bawling like a baby, but he could. The question was if Bucky could stand having his mental privacy invaded like that (again).

Though he was pale, the former assassin nodded. It was all the answer needed.

Steve wasn't sure about this, but he put the phone up to his ear anyway. "Don't worry about Tony. I have a volunteer copilot," he told LOCCENT, "We'll be there in ten." He hung up without waiting for the argument that he knew would come if he gave them the option.

In a hurry, they left the hospital room. The only stop between there and the shatterdome was the nurse's station to leave a message for Tony about where they'd gone. Otherwise it was just hopping on Steve's motorcycle and parking it.

Once in the shatterdome, everyone was everywhere. While LA wasn't being directly attacked (again) any attack made every shatterdome on the planet go nuts. At least those that were still operational, Steve thought with a scowl.

That seemed to be enough to ward off any questions about Bucky. The man followed in his footsteps like a shadow, silent as the grave. That, at least, was familiar.

Only when they were reporting in did someone have the guts to ask. "You do remember that the last guy besides Stark you got hooked into…?" the Marshal asked, dark eyes glued to Steve's.

"I remember," he said tersely, "This is James Barnes. He was treated with the same stuff I was. No risk of brain damage."

It seemed to be enough for her. "Very well. Suit up, Patriot is in the usual spot," Marshal Vilaro told him. She then went back to barking orders at LOCCENT, who scurried around like rats at the slightest glance from her.

"Let's go," Steve muttered, and pulled his friend back through the doors. Even a month after the last time he was in here, his feet automatically went into the suit up room.

The privacy of not needing to be screwed into the drive suits was more welcome than ever. It gave Steve a little time to explain the mechanism to get into the altered suit and how to steer. The idea that _he_ was qualified to explain something so high tech was more than a little strange.

Through it all, Bucky nodded along and did each step as he was instructed. When the plates began to crawl up his body, he went tense and his expression turned to one of alarm. "Steve, can you hear me?" he asked over the comms, voice hard.

"Loud and clear," Steve answered reassuringly. Even after all these times it was strange to have the suit walk him into the conn pod and fasten itself in.

JARVIS's voice rang through the conn pod. "If you'll pardon my asking, where is Sir in all of this? He is still your pilot partner, correct, Captain Rogers?" the AI asked, ever polite.

"He's still in the hospital, JARVIS. This is this universe's Bucky. He volunteered to be my copilot for now," Steve introduced the two, "Bucky, this is JARVIS. He's an AI that Tony made. He runs the jaeger and the suits." As he spoke he did the usual last minute checks, finding everything as it always was. No matter what universe he was in, Stark Industries worked fast.

"Hello," Bucky said bravely. His voice was uncertain, probably wondering if he had gone around the bend while in captivity.

"It is good to meet you, Sergeant Barnes," JARVIS said, "I am familiar with our home universe's version of you. Please refrain from trying to convince Mr Stark that the Nazis rode dinosaurs into battle. I doubt that he would fall for it a second time."

Though he obviously didn't know what to think, Bucky said, "I won't?"

Steve couldn't help his laughter. Oh, the good old days… Ever since he had gotten his Bucky back, they'd told "back in my day" stories and tried to convince everyone else of the most outlandish things they could think of. Nazis riding dinosaurs was the least of it.

"Last chance to back out, boys," the LOCCENT officer offered.

"Just get it on with," Bucky told him roughly.

 _Before he changed his mind_ , Steve mentally finished. "Let's lock and load," he said more cheerfully than he felt.

"Preparing for neural handshake," LOCCENT said.

In a form of last minute tutorial, Steve told his friend, "The memories are going to fly by, yours, mine, and probably some of Tony's. Don't latch on, just let them pass. It'll be over before you know it." Hopefully that would be enough. They were out of time.

The soothing British tones that JARVIS was programmed with took over then. "Engaging in pilot to pilot protocol in five… four… three… two… one," he said serenely, "System initiated."

Memories rushing by felt like being at home. Almost. Like being in in his home but someone had rearranged the furniture while he was away, Steve thought with a smile. The first parts of their memories were the same, just from two different angles, a testament to it really being them. It separated at his funeral, a shabby little service with only his mother, Bucky, and a priest in attendance.

The idiot actually volunteered to fight for Britain when the war began and he did, hard as he had back home or maybe even harder before he was captured by the Nazis. Then the experiments came, willing and unwilling. The table, and the pain, and name rank number _name rank number nameranknumber_ for years and years, until they finally found the key to breaking Bucky Barnes. Dead faces and punishments alike flew by, interspersed with cryofreeze when he wasn't necessary.

The emotional pain Bucky was in almost made Steve want to scream. Not just at his own memories but at those of his friend from an alternate universe, the physical agony and then the loss of him, and then the finding only to be nearly killed. The knowledge that he learned from jaeger training and as a pilot was absorbed and carefully documented before finally, they came to with matching gasps.

Having someone besides Tony in his head was strange. It was like wearing a different pair of shoes than the ones that he was used to. They fit but felt off.

Through the mental link, Bucky was on the verge of a panic attack. All that raced through his mind was fear and danger and _how can he get out PLEASE DON'T PUNISH ME-_

Carefully, Steve reached out with his mind. At the same time as he mentally offered a hug, another part of him thanked Tony for teaching him how to bring someone down who was both connected to his mind and panicking. The lesson was harsh but coming in handy again.

Bucky realized who was in his brain and rushed to meet the other man. The mental hug he got was strong, almost overwhelming in its relief and joy. " _It's really you. This is amazing. You're amazing. Thank you."_

Confused and awed, Steve jerked. Words weren't a usual part of his mental communication.

Immediately Bucky offered an apology. " _Sorry, punk."_

" _Don't worry. I'm fine. Need to adjust."_ Steve did his best to send the words over instead of feelings and images.

In return, he was given a confirmation. This time it was in feeling.

A resolution to work on this whole communication thing was agreed on even as JARVIS pronounced, "Neural link is strong and holding Captain, Sergeant." No matter that it was expected, the actual pronouncement was still surprising and gratifying.

"I'll have you know I got to Captain, thanks," Bucky corrected cheekily.

 _Does that mean we're the Captains America?_ Steve couldn't help the thought.

The laughter he got from it was loud and clear, both mental and out loud.

"Right hemisphere, calibrating," Steve said on autopilot and raised his right arm.

Bucky's right arm also drifted up. Prompted by his friend, he echoed, "Left hemisphere, calibrating."

Together they made a salute. Not quite as precise as with Tony, but it was clear enough.

"The kaiju is a Category Four headed for New Guinea, code named Bonesquid. You and Striker Eureka are assigned to take it out. Don't do anything stupid, Rogers. You've got a rookie with you," Marshal Vilaro said sternly.

The idea that Bucky could be a rookie at anything was more than a little humorous. It was the truth, however, so they agreed.

That didn't stop them from using the ride over to argue about what the plural form of Captain America. Was it Captain Americas? Or Captains America? Or was there no plural and only one in existence at a time? By the time they got to New Guinea, all they had agreed on was that this argument was useless and anything more than two would be called a squad, unit, or some other military term, depending on the size of the group.

Striker Eureka was already on the scene, chopping at it and whaling on the kaiju. The thing was tall and skinny for a kaiju, with a long head and what looked like a spikes on its back. All around the fight, destruction reigned.

Gratitude that he had stayed near the Atlantic flared up from Bucky.

That much, Steve agreed with him on. "You ready?" he asked.

"As I'll ever be," Bucky returned.

"Iron Patriot, disengaging transport," Steve called.

"Transport disengaged," JARVIS reported. "Striker Eureka, calling." The familiar icon rattled at a corner of the screen.

The pilots crouched to absorb the impact of landing. It still rattled them.

"Put them on," Steve ordered as they began walking.

The Australian accent was familiar, even if the voice was deeper than Steve remembered. It had been years since he last saw Chuck, he thought fondly, even as the boy (now a man) shouted at him that, "Finally you get here, damn Americans!"

Far from being insulted, Steve laughed. "Not our fault we're so far from New Guinea," he teased.

"You're out of the hospital already?" Herc asked between grunts of effort as his jaeger punched the kaiju repeatedly.

"Tony's still in the hospital. I've got Bucky Barnes in here with me," Steve corrected, even as he and his partner waded into the fight and began busting bones. "Bucky, this is Chuck Hansen and his dad, Herc, and their jaeger Striker Eureka." Holding a conversation while fighting was second nature for Steve by now, between piloting and being an Avenger. He proved it when he brought out the stun spikes to add more hurt to the punches.

Less used to this, but capable of handling many things at once, Bucky grunted out, "Hey."

Now that they had established a rapport, both teams got down to business. Striker's missiles had all been used up and the thing was faster than anything either of them had ever encountered before. It led to a lot of near misses and howls of frustration.

Finally, Steve got angry and ordered JARVIS to, "Unibeam the bitch until we can't."

Bonesquid wasn't nearly as thick skinned as Insurrector. And at this range, it wasn't quite fast enough to dodge the weapon that no kaiju ever expected. After all, the center of the chest was usually an instant kill zone for jaegers because their power plants were housed there.

This time, the kaiju reached for the light at the center of a jaeger's chest- and it got fried. Instead of swiping at an engine, it had gotten too near to a fatal weapon. With a shriek it tried to back away, only to be stabbed repeatedly by Striker. Less than a minute later, the unibeam had done its job. A hole was blasted straight through the middle of Bonesquid, and it wobbled then fell hard enough to cause a minor earthquake.

Amazement and pride filled Bucky, and mixed with Steve's own elated relief. Both men laughed with the force of it, unable to stop themselves. Who said that the Winter Soldier couldn't save the world?

Warm, familial affection blazed through Steve. This wasn't _his_ Bucky, but this was still _a_ Bucky. No matter what universe, a Bucky was always a brother.

Shyly, Bucky nudged him back with similar sentiments. " _Not mine but still mine."_

Neither could see it past their helmets, but both knew they were grinning sappily at each other.

"Now that that's over and done with, I've got a question for you, Rogers," Chuck said, panting.

Steve made a noise to tell him to continue.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" Chuck demanded petulantly.

Both of Iron Patriot's current pilots couldn't help laughing again. The world was slowly going back to how it should be. Kind of.


End file.
